nd to discuss deeply and at length their favorite authors. When
our meals were in preparation or safely over there was more literature,
five to one, in the kitchen than in any other part of the house.

Sometimes the drift of it came to us. It was necessary for Gibbs to
speak up pretty smartly to get his remarks into Hunka-munka's
consciousness. Once in the heat of things we heard him say: "One may not
really compare or contrast the literary emanations of Tolstoy and
Kipling except as to the net human residuum. Difference in environment
would preclude any cosmic psychology of interrelationship."

As this noble sentence came hurtling through the door I felt poor and
disheartened. Never could I hope to reach such a height. And here was
Gibbs washing dishes and tossing off those things without a thought.
Hunka-munka's reply was lost on us. Like many persons of defective
hearing, she had the habit of speaking low, but I do not think her
remarks were in the gaudy class of her associate's.

Their discussions were not entirely of Tolstoy and Kipling. There was a
neighborhood library and they took books from it--books which I judge
became more romantic as the weeks went by. I judge this because Gibbs
grew more careful in the matter of dress, and when the days became
pleasanter the two walked down to the bridge across the brook and looked
over into the water, after the manner of heroes and heroines in the
novels of Mrs. Southworth and Bertha M. Clay.

What might have been the outcome of the discussions, the dish-washings,
the walks, the leanings over the bridge at the trysting-place, we may
only speculate now. For a time the outlook for this "romance of real
life" seemed promising, then came disillusion. Gibbs, alas, had a bent
which at first we did not suspect, but which in time became only too
manifest. It had its root in a laudable desire--the desire to destroy
anything resembling strong drink. Only, I think he went at it in the
wrong way. His idea was to destroy it by drinking it up. He
miscalculated his capacity. It took no great quantity of strong waters
to partially destroy Gibbs, and at such times he was neither literary
nor romantic, no fit mate for Hunka-munka, who had a tidy sum in savings
laid away and did not wish to invest it in the destroying process. I do
not know what she said to him, at last, but there came a day when he
vanished from our sight and knowledge, and the kitchen after dinner was
silent. I suppose