that exercise to a solitary man, when he arrives at the practical age
in which he cannot sit for six hours at a stretch musing on the divine
essence; and rheumatism or other ailments forbid his adventure into
the wilds of Africa as a missionary? At that age, Nature, which will
be heard, Mr. Chillingly, demands her rights. A sympathizing female
companion by one's side; innocent little children climbing one's
knee,--lovely, bewitching picture! Who can be Goth enough to rub it
out, who fanatic enough to paint over it the image of a Saint Simeon
sitting alone on a pillar? Take another glass. You don't drink
enough, Mr. Chillingly."

"I have drunk enough," replied Kenelm, in a sullen voice, "to think I
see double. I imagined that before me sat the austere adversary of
the insanity of love and the miseries of wedlock. Now, I fancy I
listen to a puling sentimentalist uttering the platitudes which the
other Decimus Roach had already refuted. Certainly either I see
double, or you amuse yourself with mocking my appeal to your wisdom."

"Not so, Mr. Chillingly. But the fact is, that when I wrote that book
of which you speak I was young, and youth is enthusiastic and
one-sided. Now, with the same disdain of the excesses to which love
may hurry weak intellects, I recognize its benignant effects when
taken, as I before said, rationally,--taken rationally, my young
friend. At that period of life when the judgment is matured, the
soothing companionship of an amiable female cannot but cheer the mind,
and prevent that morose hoar-frost into which solitude is chilled and
made rigid by increasing years. In short, Mr. Chillingly, having
convinced myself that I erred in the opinion once too rashly put
forth, I owe it to Truth, I owe it to Mankind, to make my conversion
known to the world. And I am about next month to enter into the