tells them that he remarries to give a mother to his dear little
ones--nine times out of ten an indifferent one, and not unfrequently a
bad one. If he has no children, he says he is so lonely that he must
have a companion, also a housekeeper, and he gives you to understand
that all this is 'en tout bien, tout honneur.' And he says it to his
friends, and he repeats it to himself so often that he finishes by
believing it is so.

The widow with children will tell you that she cannot support her
children and that she wants a protector for them and for herself. And
she often speaks the truth. At any rate, if you listen to them all, not
one will ever tell you frankly that he remarries because he has fallen
in love with a woman, and she because she has met a man who appeals to
her fancy. When people apologize for what they do, I always suspect
them of having done something of which they are not particularly proud,
if not absolutely ashamed.

No man has ever been in the next world and returned to earth to tell
his fellow-creatures what he saw there except Lazarus; but his
contemporaries neglected to interview him, and we are as much in the
dark on the subject as if he had never left his grave. However, there
is a rumour, in Catholic countries at all events, that St. Peter admits
all married men, without any other qualification than the fact that
they were married and, therefore, had their purgatory on earth, but
that he invariably and rigorously turns out any man who has been
married more than once. It is said that, when they protest, suggesting
that if he lets in men who have been married once and have thus had
their purifying martyrdom on earth, surely he ought to let them in who
have been married more than once, he slams the door in their faces,
saying: 'Do you take this place for a lunatic asylum?'

I know a Scotchman who, the other day, married his fourth wife. He is
only sixty-seven years old, and no widow or old maid should give up
hope in the little village of five hundred inhabitants where he lives.
He is proud to say that he has never taken a wife out of that village.
All his wives have made him happy, and he has made them all happy, as
you can ascertain from the epitaphs he has written himself on the
tombstone that stands over the grave where they are all at rest in
chronological order. He specially praises them for the love and care
they bestowed on the children of those that went before.

I believe, in spite of