and worldly. You have such power over me, you ought to be my
inspiration."

"I'll be your common-sense, John. When you get on stilts, and run
benevolence into the ground, I'll pull you down. Now, I know it must
be bad for a man, that has as much as you do to occupy his mind all
the week, to go out and work Sundays; and it's foolish, when you could
perfectly well hire somebody else to do it, and stay at home, and have
a good time."

"But, Lillie, I _need_ it myself."

"Need it,--what for? I can't imagine."

"To keep me from becoming a mere selfish, worldly man, and living for
mere material good and pleasure."

"You dear old Don Quixote! Well, you are altogether in the clouds
above me. I can't understand a word of all that."

"Well, good-by, darling," said John, kissing her, and hastening out of
the room, to cut short the interview.

Milton has described the peculiar influence of woman over man, in
lowering his moral tone, and bringing him down to what he considered
the peculiarly womanly level. "You women," he said to his wife, when
she tried to induce him to seek favors at court by some concession of
principle,--"you women never care for any thing but to be fine, and to
ride in your coaches." In Father Adam's description of the original
Eve, he says,--

"All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her,
Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows."

Something like this effect was always produced on John's mind when he
tried to settle questions relating to his higher nature with Lillie.
He seemed, somehow, always to get the worst of it. All her womanly
graces and fascinations, so powerful over his senses and imagination,
arrayed themselves formidably against him, and for the time seemed to
strike him dumb. What he believed, and believed with enthusiasm, when
he was alone, or with Grace, seemed to drizzle away, and be belittled,
when he undertook to convince her of it. Lest John should be called
a muff and a spoon for this peculiarity, we cite once more the high
authority aforesaid, where Milton makes poor Adam tell the angel,--

"Yet when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best."

John went out from Lillie's presence rather humbled and over-crowed.
When the woman that a man loves laughs at his moral enthusiasms, it
i