it is all one to her, confound her.

I wonder sometimes if good temper might not be taught. In business
we use no harsh language, say no unkind things to one another. The
shopkeeper, leaning across the counter, is all smiles and affability,
he might put up his shutters were he otherwise. The commercial gent, no
doubt, thinks the ponderous shopwalker an ass, but refrains from telling
him so. Hasty tempers are banished from the City. Can we not see that
it is just as much to our interest to banish them from Tooting and
Hampstead?

The young man who sat in the chair next to me, how carefully he wrapped
the cloak round the shoulders of the little milliner beside him. And
when she said she was tired of sitting still, how readily he sprang
from his chair to walk with her, though it was evident he was very
comfortable where he was. And she! She had laughed at his jokes; they
were not very clever jokes, they were not very new. She had probably
read them herself months before in her own particular weekly journal.
Yet the harmless humbug made him happy. I wonder if ten years hence
she will laugh at such old humour, if ten years hence he will take such
clumsy pains to put her cape about her. Experience shakes her head, and
is amused at my question.

I would have evening classes for the teaching of temper to married
couples, only I fear the institution would languish for lack of pupils.
The husbands would recommend their wives to attend, generously offering
to pay the fee as a birthday present. The wife would be indignant at the
suggestion of good money being thus wasted. "No, John, dear," she would
unselfishly reply, "you need the lessons more than I do. It would be a
shame for me to take them away from you," and they would wrangle upon
the subject for the rest of the day.

Oh! the folly of it. We pack our hamper for life's picnic with such
pains. We spend so much, we work so hard. We make choice pies, we cook
prime joints, we prepare so carefully the mayonnaise, we mix with loving
hands the salad, we cram the basket to the lid with every delicacy we
can think of. Everything to make the picnic a success is there except
the salt. Ah! woe is me, we forget the salt. We slave at our desks,
in our workshops, to make a home for those we love; we give up our
pleasures, we give up our rest. We toil in our kitchen from morning till
night, and we render the whole feast tasteless for want of a ha'porth
of salt--for want of a soupcon of