f her whole life for happiness--and so on? It certainly should not
seem so to readers of the book. And it is natural enough, as her
husband has totally failed to hold her, that this young woman's mind,
and heart, too, should convince her that she may make what she regards
as a wiser disposition of her life.

"The inevitable strong man whom she eventually marries seems
unfortunately to have a bit of a flaw in his granite character; at any
rate, something is wrong with him, as the heroine fails to hold him
altogether, and matters even begin to look as though she might lose
him. But with her great happiness had come a new standard of honour,
and a distrust of divorce as the solution of any marital problem.
Would it be right for her to lose a husband who has tired of her? Not
by a long shot! Marriage is the one vow we take before God. It is a
contract. Is it not against all moral law to break a contract? And
all the rest of it. So feminine logic disposes of what is described as
one of the great problems of the day."

Suddenly the Colonel broke into a terrifying smile. "This novelist of
whom we have just been speaking," he said, "somewhere remarked in an
interview that it was too bad about poor George Gissing--where she
picked up Gissing, God only knows--as, writing away all his life at
stuff people didn't care for, he was one of the tragedies of
literature. Well, Gissing may be dead and gone, but his works stick
on. I could tell her"--the Colonel glared as he pawed his enormous
hand through his mane--"of a more profound tragedy of literature."

XI

THE DESSERT OF LIFE

Birds of a feather flock together, you can tell a dog by its spots, a
man is known by the company he keeps--and all that sort of thing.

It is quite astonishing that nobody has before been struck by what I
have in my eye. People go round all the while writing about Old
Greenwich Village, the harbour, the Ghetto, the walk uptown. Coney
Island, the Great White Way, the subway ride, Riverside Drive, the
spectacle of Fifth Avenue, the Night Court, the "lungs" of the
metropolis, the "cliff dwellers," "faith, hope, and charity" on
University Heights--a cathedral, a university, and a hospital, "lobster
palace society," the "grand canons" of lower Manhattan, and about every
other part of and thing in New York except this most entertaining
section which I am about to discuss.

Now, I never lived on Mars----

You know "Sunday stories" in t