ks theatre-goers are as a class the most
discontented people there are in society. He used to spend his earnings
in various other places which now weary him beyond measure, and are
equally wearisome to those bachelor friends of his who used to keep him
company, and are forced by single life, to still frequent such resorts.

THIS HE FINDS OUT

when his wife goes into the country for a week or two. Those two weeks
are never halcyon days with him. There is a smell about a restaurant
that eloquently pleads the sweetness of home, and there is a lack of
confidence expressed in a pewter spoon and a general disinclination to
believe that anyone is careful molded in with the thickness of the
teacup, which startle him at once into a better conception of his wife's
confidence in him.

8. My friend comes home and finds his dressing-gown and slippers in
front of the fire. He is tired and cross, and doesn't want to sling
ashes nor bang a coal-hod. But the sight of the fire makes him feel
better at once, and if there be no fire, there are no ashes. He sits in
front of a coke fire in a grate. His little girl brings his slippers and
carries off his shoes--or carries off one shoe and one slipper. Then he
falls to thinking that girls are poor property as compared with boys,
but that any kind of children are a pretty good investment against one's
old age. His increasing wonder is that the whole state of things is so
natural. His wife takes comfort in having him in the same room with her.
When he is reading and she is darning socks, she is the very embodiment
of the fine French expression "I am content." She is not as beautiful as
she once was. But

ALL THE ELEMENTS OF HER BEAUTY

are still present, and with a return of the flesh she has lost in hard
work she will have all her looks. A handsome woman is just as handsome
to a man as a handsome girl is to a green young man like Mr. Bachelor.
My friend is hugging the shores of personal expense very closely for the
purpose of having two weeks in the country with his wife during the heat
of July. This woman's face does not intoxicate him as it once
unquestionably did. Neither does the "Trovatore miserere," nor the
"William Tell" or "Poet and Peasant" overtures so delight him as once
upon a time. Nevertheless there is in him a secret joy of possession,
calm and pleasant, in contemplating the wife, and a quiet satisfaction,
in hearing the music, that the taste of his youth was so thorough