ommon."

"I own nothing of the sort. You have your house and your interests, your
happiness and your lives, in common. We men are so exacting, we expect
to find ideal nymphs and goddesses when we condescend to marry a mortal;
and if we did, our chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come
up as cold as a stone."

"Per Bacco, you are an oracle," said Riccabocca, laughing. "But I am not
so skeptical as you are. I honor the fair sex too much. There are a
great many women who realize the ideal of men to be found in--the
poets!"

"There's my dear Mrs. Dale," resumed the Parson, not heeding this
sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice into a whisper,
and looking round cautiously--"there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best woman
in the world--an angel I would say, if the word was not profane; BUT--"

"What's the BUT" asked the Doctor demurely.

"BUT I too might say that 'we have not much in common,' if I were only
to compare mind to mind, and, when my poor Carry says something less
profound than Madame de Stael might have said, smile on her in contempt
from the elevation of logic and Latin. Yet, when I remember all the
little sorrows and joys that we have shared together, and feel how
solitary I should have been without her--oh, then, I am instantly aware
that there is between us in common something infinitely closer and
better than if the same course of study had given us the same equality
of ideas; and I was forced to brace myself for a combat of intellect, as
I am when I fall in with a tiresome sage like yourself. I don't pretend
to say that Mrs. Riccabocca is a Mrs. Dale," added the Parson, with
lofty candor--"there is but one Mrs. Dale in the world; but still, you
have drawn a prize in the wheel matrimonial! Think of Socrates, and yet
he was content even with his--Xantippe!"

Dr. Riccabocca called to mind Mrs. Dale's "little tempers," and inly
rejoiced that no second Mrs. Dale had existed to fall to his own lot.
His placid Jemima gained by the contrast. Nevertheless, he had the ill
grace to reply, "Socrates was a man beyond all imitation!--Yet I believe
that even he spent very few of his evenings at home. But, _revenons a
nos moutons_, we are nearly at Mrs. Fairfield's cottage, and you have
not yet told me what you have settled as to Leonard."

The Parson halted, took Riccabocca by the button, and informed him, in
very few words, that Leonard was to go to Lansmere to see some relations
there, who