for his morals and understanding [she says] I refer you to his _Christian Hero_.” Steele’s marriage comes of it--a marriage whose ups and downs, and lights and shadows have curious and very graphic illustration in the storm of notelets which he wrote to his wife--on bill-heads, perfumed paper, tavern reckonings--all, singularly enough, in existence now, and carefully kept in the Library of the British Museum. Here is a part of one, written just before his marriage: “Madam, it is the hardest thing in the World to be in Love, and yet attend Business. As for me all that speak to me find me out.… A gentleman ask’d me this morning what news from Lisbon, and I answered, ‘She’s exquisitely handsome.’” Here’s another--after marriage: “Dear Prue, I enclose two guineas, and will come home exactly at seven. Yrs tenderly.” And again: “Dear Prue, I enclose five guineas, but cannot come home to dinner. Dear little woman, take care of thyself, and eat and drink cheerfully.” Yet again: “Dear Prue, if you do not hear of me before three to-morrow, believe that I am too [tipsy] to obey your orders; but, however, know me to be your most affectionate, faithful husband.” It is more promising for a man to speak of his own tippling than to have others speak of it; nor was this writer’s sinning in that way probably beyond the average in his time. But he was of that mercurial temperament which took wine straight to the brain; and so was always at bad odds with those men of better digestion (such as Swift and Addison) who were only tickled effusively with such bouts as lifted the hilarious Captain Steele into a noisy effervescence. There are better and worse letters than those I have read; but never any lack of averment that he enjoys most of anything in life his wife’s delightful presence--but can’t get home, really cannot; some excellent fellows have come in, or he is at the tavern--business is important; and she is always his charming Prue; and always he twists a little wordy aureole of praise about her head or her curls. I suppose she took a deal of comfort out of his tender adjectives; but I think she learned early not to sit up for him, and got over that married woe with great alacrity. There is evidence that she loved him throughout; and other evidence that she gave him some moral fisticuffs--when he did get home--which made his next stay at the tavern easier and more defensible. But he loved his Prue, in his way, all her life through, and showed a beautiful fondness for his children. In that budget of notelets I spoke of (and which the wife so carefully cherished), are some charming ones to his children: thus he writes to his daughter Elizabeth, whose younger sister, Mary, has just begun to put her initials, M. S., to messages of love to him: