came to the mirror!'

"Therefore," concluded Mr. Caxton, returning unexpectedly to the
subject--"therefore it is no reason to suppose that Dr. Riccabocca is
averse to cleanliness and decent care of the person, because he is a
philosopher; and, all things considered, he never showed himself more a
philosopher than when he left off his spectacles and looked his best."

"Well," said my mother kindly, "I only hope it may turn out happily. But
I should have been better pleased if Pisistratus had had not made Dr.
Riccabocca so reluctant a wooer."

"Very true," said the Captain; "the Italian does not shine as a lover.
Throw a little more fire into him, Pisistratus--something gallant and
chivalrous."

"Fire--gallantry--chivalry!" cried my father, who had taken Riccabocca
under his special protection--"why, don't you see that the man is
described as a philosopher?--and I should like to know when a
philosopher ever plunged into matrimony without considerable misgivings
and cold shivers. Indeed, it seems that--perhaps before he was a
philosopher--Riccabocca _had_ tried the experiment, and knew what it
was. Why, even that plain-speaking, sensible, practical man, Metellus
Numidicus, who was not even a philosopher, but only a Roman censor, thus
expressed himself in an exhortation to the people to perpetrate
matrimony--'If, O Quirites, we could do without wives, we should all
dispense with that subject of care (_ea molestia careremus_); but since
nature has so managed it, that we cannot live with women comfortably,
nor without them at all, let us rather provide for the human race than
our own temporary felicity.'"

Here the ladies set up a cry of such indignation, that both Roland and
myself endeavored to appease their wrath by hasty assurances that we
utterly repudiated that damnable doctrine of Metellus Numidicus.

My father, wholly unmoved, as soon as a sullen silence was established,
re-commenced--"Do not think, ladies," said he, "that you were without
advocates at that day; there were many Romans gallant enough to blame
the censor for a mode of expressing himself which they held to be
equally impolite and injudicious. 'Surely,' said they, with some
plausibility, 'if Numidicus wished men to marry, he need not have
referred so peremptorily to the disquietudes of the connection, and thus
have made them more inclined to turn away from matrimony than given them
a relish for it.' But against these critics one honest man (whose