."

Layton slipped his arm within the other's to move away, but as he did so
he turned one last look towards the little garden.

"I see it all now," said Quackinboss, as they walked along; "you've been
and met a sweetheart down here once on a time, that's it. She's been
what they call cruel, or she's broke her word to you. Well, I don't
suppose there's one man livin'--of what might be called real men--as has
n't had something of the same experience. Some has it early, some late,
but it's like the measles, it pushes you main hard if you don't take
it when you 're young. There's no bending an old bough,--you must break
it."

There was a deep tone of melancholy in the way the last words were
uttered that made Layton feel his companion was speaking from the heart.

"But it's all our own fault," broke in Quackinboss, quickly; "it all
comes of the way we treat 'em."

"How do you mean?" asked Layton, eagerly.

"I mean," said the other, resolutely, "we treat 'em as reasonable
beings, and they ain't. No, sir, women is like Red-men; they ain't to
be persuaded, or argued with; they 're to be told what is right for
'em, and good for 'em, and that's all. What does all your courting and
coaxing a gal, but make her think herself something better than all
creation? Why, you keep a-tellin' her so all day, and she begins to
believe it at last. Now, how much better and fairer to say to her,
'Here's how it is, miss, you 've got to marry me, that's how it's
fixed.' She 'll understand that."

"But if she says, 'No, I won't'?"

"No, no," said Quackinboss, with a half-bitter smile, "she 'll never
say that to the man as knows how to tell her his mind. And as for that
courtship, it's all a mistake. Why, women won't confess they like a man,
just to keep the game a-movin'. I'm blest if they don't like it better
than marriage."

Layton gave a faint smile, but, faint as it was, Quackinboss perceived
it, and said,--

"Now, don't you go a-persuadin' yourself these are all Yankee notions
and such-like. I'm a-talkin' of human natur', and there ain't many as
knows more of that article than Leonidas Shaver Quackinboss. All you
Old-World folk make one great mistake, and nothing shows so clearly as
how you 're a worn-out race, used up and done for, You live too much
with your emotions and your feelin's. Have you never remarked that when
the tap-root of a tree strikes down too far, it gets into a cold soil?
And from that day for'ard you 'll neve