Our proof-reader was a benevolent old gentleman of obsolete customs, who in an age of open-air cures still wore a mouth and nose respirator. He was such an eminently respectable person that I never could quite understand why he associated himself with anything so disreputable as the _Tocsin_. I always half suspected that he came there principally on my account, chivalrously determined that I should not be surrounded _solely_ by scum. But besides this motive he had some pretensions to being a man of advanced views, and was a purchaser of "advanced" literature. The introduction of this into the precincts of his home was a great trial to his better half, who had no kind of sympathy with such leanings. New-fangled ideas of any description were tabooed by her, and all preachers and holders of such she unconditionally consigned to hell-fires. Her husband she regarded as a brand to be snatched from the burning, and she and a few select female relatives worked hard to snatch him. But although new-fangled ideas on social organisation and political economy were bad enough, one thing alone was beyond all human endurance to the mind of Mrs. Crawley, and that one thing was free-love. One day Mr. Crawley brought home "The Woman Who Did," and neglected to conceal it. It was found by his wife lying on the dining-room sofa. "My fingers itched to seize and burn the impudent huzzy, lying there as unconcerned as though she had been the 'Private Meditations and Prayers of the Rev. Bagge,'" Mrs. Crawley confided to her Aunt Elizabeth, "but it was a six-shilling book, and I knew how Crawley valued it, and for the life of me I did not dare touch it." It was a sore trial indeed to Mrs. Crawley to live under the same roof with such a person, but she dared not so far outrage the feelings of one whom she had sworn to love, honour, and obey, as to execute the offending lady. She long meditated some revenge, some outlet for her outraged feelings; it was long in coming, but come it did at last. The "Man Who Didn't" followed in the footsteps of his irregular mate, and in a fourpenny-halfpenny edition. This was more than the worthy matron could stand, and either he or she herself must leave the house. She summoned Aunt Elizabeth, a lady of irreproachable moral standard, the whites of whose eyes had a habit of turning up spasmodically, and the corners of whose mouth down, and to her she unburdened her feelings. "My dear Eliza," she said, "I have too long tolerated 'The Woman Who Did,' but when it comes to the 'Man Who Didn't,' that--er--well, that disgusting 'Man Who Didn't'--and how am I to know that he didn't, the brazen creature!--it is time I asserted my authority. I cannot and I will not stand him." The offending and irresolute gentleman was then seized upon with a pair of tongs, carried in solemn procession to the remotest room in the house, and burnt. The sanctity of matrimony had reasserted its rights.