ether she would let me and like it. It is an absurd
thing, and I ought not to confess, but I tell you and you only, Beloved,
my heart gave a perceptible jump when it heard the whisper of that
possibility overhead! Every day has its ebb and flow, but such a thought
as that is like one of those tidal waves they talk about, that rolls in
like a great wall and overtops and drowns out all your landmarks, and
you, too, if you don't mind what you are about and stand ready to run
or climb or swim. Not quite so bad as that, though, this time. I take
an interest in our Scheherezade. I am glad she did n't smile on the pipe
and the Bohemian-looking fellow that finds the best part of his life in
sucking at it. A fine thing, isn't it; for a young woman to marry a man
who will hold her

"Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse,"

but not quite so good as his meerschaum? It is n't for me to throw
stones, though, who have been a Nicotian a good deal more than half my
days. Cigar-stump out now, and consequently have become very bitter on
more persevering sinners. I say I take an interest in our Scheherezade,
but I rather think it is more paternal than anything else, though
my heart did give that jump. It has jumped a good many times without
anything very remarkable coming of it.

This visit to the Observatory is going to bring us all, or most of us,
together in a new way, and it wouldn't be very odd if some of us should
become better acquainted than we ever have been. There is a chance
for the elective affinities. What tremendous forces they are, if two
subjects of them come within range! There lies a bit of iron. All the
dynamic agencies of the universe are pledged to hold it just in that
position, and there it will lie until it becomes a heap of red-brown
rust. But see, I hold a magnet to it,--it looks to you like just such a
bit of iron as the other,--and lo! it leaves them all,--the tugging of
the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in white, trailing the
snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large
as a sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,--it
leaves the wrestling of all their forces, which are at a dead lock with
each other, all fighting for it, and springs straight to the magnet.
What a lucky thing it is for well-conducted persons that the maddening
elective affinities don't come into play in full force very often!

I suppose I am making a good