lp being mutual--it was a trifle paradoxical!

The Taylors were just finishing tea when young Mr. Mill called. They
were surprised and delighted to see him. He was a bit abashed, and could
not quite remember what it was he wanted to ask Mrs. Taylor, but he
finally got around to something else just as good. Mrs. Taylor had
written an article on the "Subjugation of Women"--would Mr. Mill take it
home with him and read it, or would he like to hear her read a little of
it now?

Mr. Mill's fine face revealed his delight at the prospect of being read
to. So Mrs. Taylor read a little aloud to Mr. Mill, while Mr. Taylor
took a much-needed nap in the corner.

In a few days Mr. Mill called to return Mrs. Taylor's manuscript and
leave a little essay he himself had written on a similar theme. Mr.
Taylor was greatly pleased at this fine friendship that had sprung up
between his gifted wife and young Mr. Mill--Mrs. Taylor was so much
improved in health, so much more buoyant! Thursday night soon became
sacred at the Taylors' to Mr. Mill, and Sunday he always took dinner
with them.

Goldwin Smith, a trifle grumpy, with a fine forgetfulness as to the
saltness of time, says that young Mr. Mill had been kept such a recluse
that when he met Mrs. Taylor he considered that he was the first man to
discover the potency of sex, and that he thought his experience was
unique in the history of mankind.

Perhaps love does make a fool of a man--I really can not say. If so,
then John Stuart Mill never recovered his sanity. Suppose we let John
speak for himself--I quote from his "Autobiography":

It was at the period of my mental progress which I have now reached
that I formed the friendship which has been the honor and chief
blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of
all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for
human improvement.

My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty
years, consented to become my wife, was in Eighteen Hundred Thirty,
when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year.

* * * * *

I very soon felt her to be the most admirable person I had ever
known.

It is not to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age
at which I first saw her, could be, all that she became afterwards.
Least of all could this be true of her, with whom self-improvement,