Genesis, for instance. And then who has not read Carlyle's gloating
over a certain historical suit of leather? It gives me a queer thrill of
envy, that Quaker Fox and his suit of leather. Conceive it, if you can!
One would never have to quail under the scrutiny of a tailor any more.
Thoreau, too, come to think of it, was, by way of being a prophet, a
pioneer in this Emancipation of Man from Bothery.

Then the silent gentry who brew our Chartreuse; what are they in
retirement for? Looking back into history, with the glow of discovery in
my eyes, I find records of wise men--everyone acknowledged they were
wise men--who lived apart. In every age the same associate of solitude,
silence, and wisdom. The holy hermits!... I grant it, they professed to
flee wickedness and seek after righteousness, but now my impression is
that they fled bothers. We all know they had an intense aversion to any
savour of domesticity, and they never shaved, washed, dined, visited,
had new clothes. Holiness, indeed! They were _viveurs_.... We have
witnessed Religion without Theology, and why not an Unsectarian Thebaid?
I sometimes fancy it needs only one brave man to begin.... If it were
not for the fuss Euphemia would make I certainly should. But I know she
would come and worry me worse than St. Anthony was worried until I put
them all on again, and that keeps me from the attempt.

I am curious whether mine is the common experience. I fancy, after all,
I am only seeing in a clearer way, putting into modern phrase, so to
speak, an observation old as the Pentateuch. And looking up I read upon
a little almanac with which Euphemia has cheered my desk:--

"The world was sad" (sweet sadness!)
"The garden was a wild" (a picturesque wild)
"And man the hermit" (he made no complaint)
"Till the woman smiled."--CAMPBELL.

[And very shortly after he had, as you know, all that bother about the
millinery.]

ON THE CHOICE OF A WIFE

Wife-choosing is an unending business. This sounds immoral, but what I
mean will be clearer in the context. People have lived--innumerable
people--exhausted experience, and yet other people keep on coming to
hand, none the wiser, none the better. It is like a waterfall more than
anything else in the world. Every year one has to turn to and warn
another batch about these stale old things. Yet it is one's duty--the
last thing that remains to a man. And as a piece of worldly wisdom, that
ha