or two),
the lawyers would lose much profit; but I fear race suicide might ensue.
Nothing, unless it is the sick-room or the card-table, brings out the
real characteristics of human beings like travel.

The irritating delays of boats and trains, and the still more irritating
unresponsiveness of officials, when asked the cause, will test the
temper and the patience of even a pair of lovers. It is not surprising
if the traveller does lose both at times, but it is admirable if he does
not. I remember how adorable you were, while I was a bundle of dynamite,
ready to explode and send the stolid, uncommunicative conductor and
brakemen into a journey through space, when we suffered that long delay
coming from California. It is due the travelling public to explain such
delays, but the railroads of America have grown to feel that they owe no
explanation to any one, even to God, for what they do or do not. While I
lost vitality and composure by such idle reflections, you were amusing
the nervous travellers by your bright bits of narrative and ready
repartee. That fortunate fellow you have promised to marry at the end of
two years has no idea what a charming companion he will find in you for
travel.

It is interesting to have you say you feel that you need two more years
as a teacher, before you are fully developed enough to take up the
responsibilities of marriage. You will be twenty-seven then:--that is
the age at which the average American girl begins to be most
interesting, and the age when she is first physically mature.

And your children will be more fully endowed mentally than if you had
become a mother in your teens.

As a rule the brainy people of the world are not born of very youthful
parents; you will find youth gives physique, maturity gives brains to
offspring.

I did not quite finish my train of reasoning about your self-esteem.

It was because you had always believed yourself to be capable of doing
anything you undertook to do, that you were roused by my assertion that
you could not make a good school-teacher, to attempt it. I hurt your
pride a bit, and you were determined to prove me wrong. Had you been
self-depreciating and oversensitive, what I said would have turned you
from that field of effort. And that would have been a desirable result,
since one who can be turned from any undertaking _ought to be_.

I still think the world has lost a wonderful artist by your not entering
the lists of designers an