So Mr. Floss said nothing when he went home; and, in the evening, as Fanny sat in the rocking chair, singing an evening hymn, in a low, sweet voice, he looked steadily at her, for five minutes, and watched the innocent play of her beautiful modest face, and gave the matter up. “It will never do,” said he, “for as to leaving her behind, that is out of the question; neither of us could bear the separation; and as to taking her to Washington—Good Heavens!” Well might he thus exclaim; for, excepting to knit, and sew, and work muslin, and do kind little offices for the poor, and love her father and mother, her twelve sisters—and, oh, best of all, her husband, what else did Fanny Floss know?—not an earthly thing. It was some time after his marriage before Mr. Floss found it all out; but when the first surprise was over, he soon got used to it; and, after a few vain attempts to enlighten her, he gave it up, and let his mind flow into other channels. He made friends; had dinner parties—Could not _he_ give dinner parties, with so many able and willing coadjutors?—and nothing could show off to better advantage than his beautiful, modest wife, and four or five of her neat, happy sisters, scattered about the dinner table. “What was it,” you ask, “that Fanny did not know?” All that she knew I have told you already, gentle reader. Do you think that she ever so much as dreamed that the earth moved around the sun?—that mahogany was once a tree?—that the carpet came from a sheep’s back?—that her bobbinet lace came from a cotton pod?—As to her silk dress, could it be supposed that her imagination ever ran riot so far as to believe that little worms spun the web? Does any one think for a moment, that she knew that quills were plucked from the wing of a goose?—that paper came from old rags?—that a looking-glass was ever any thing but the smooth, polished thing it now is? She saw loads of hay pass, and knew that horses were fed with it; but she never speculated on the manner in which it became hay. It is a chance if she knew that it was once grass. Not that Fanny had never read all this, when very young, in her little books; but she read without letting any thing make an impression. Nothing was a mystery to her; she never made a doubt of any thing; but took things and left them just as she found them, either in books or in conversation. Once her husband said, “I wonder whether they pull the feathers from the tail of the ostrich while he is alive?” “Would it hurt him if they did?” said Fanny. “Yes, I presume it would,” replied he. “Then they wait till the poor thing dies,” quoth she—“only look, dear husband, see that merry little group of children, all boys too; how my father would rejoice if they were all his sons.”