live up to them, but allow themselves to be gently and feebly
miserable all their lives.

Now, Charlie Hardy has periods of being the most miserable man I ever
knew. His last interview with Louise must have been as serious a thing as
he ever experienced. He has married Frankie Taliaferro, and she makes the
sweetest little kitten of a wife you ever saw. In Louise he would have
been protected by a coat of mail. In Frankie he finds it turned into a
pale-blue eider-down quilt, which suits his temperament much better.

Louise Whitehouse is coming home soon. Her year abroad has lengthened into
several years, and they have been the most beautiful of her life, she
writes. "Living with a song in one's life may be the sweetest while it
lasts and before one thinks; but to live by a psalm is to find life
infinitely more beautiful and worthier. I never can be thankful enough
that my life was taken out of my hands at the time when I clung to it most
blindly, and ordered anew by One stronger and wiser than I."

Tears come to my eyes whenever I think of this girl. I do not quite know
why, unless it is that there always is something sad in watching the
tempering of a bright young enthusiasm, even though it becomes more useful
than when so sparkling and high-strung.

I have been at great pains to have Charlie Hardy realize how happy Louise
is, but his conscience still troubles him at times. He says he knows he
did the right thing for every one concerned, but he dislikes the idea of
himself in so disagreeable a role; and Louise's opinion of him now, after
the one she did have, is a constant humiliation to him. Women always have
admired him, and he objects very strongly to any exception to the rule. I
think he misses the mental ozone which he found in Louise. I often wonder
if men who have loved superior women and married average ones do not have
occasional wonderings and yearnings over lost "might have beens."

The Mayos still live in the brown house, which has been enlarged and
greatly beautified recently. I have an enthusiastic friendship with the
children, who are growing into slim slips of girls and sturdy, clear-eyed
boys, and their house is still a home. Frank's admiration for soubrettes
died a sudden and violent death at the masked notoriety of his initial
escapade, and for a time he was shocked into better behavior. We hear odd
rumors floating around, however, of whose truth we never can be sure, but
which we shake our heads ov