The "last word" is the most dangerous of infernal machines. Husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bomb-shell. What is the use of the last word? After getting it a husband might perhaps, as an American newspaper suggests, advertise to whistle for a wager against a locomotive; but in every other respect his victory would be useless and painful. It would be a Cadmean victory in which the victor would suffer as much as the vanquished. A farmer cut down a tree which stood so near the boundary line of his farm that it was doubtful whether it belonged to him or to his neighbour. The neighbour, however, claimed the tree, and prosecuted the man who cut it for damages. The case was sent from court to court. Time was wasted and temper lost; but the case was finally gained by the prosecutor. The last of the transaction was that the man who gained the cause went to the lawyer's office to execute a deed of his whole farm, which he had been compelled to sell to pay his costs! Then, houseless and homeless, he thrust his hands into his pockets, and triumphantly exclaimed, "I've beat him!" In the same way husband and wife may become bankrupt of heart-wealth by endeavouring to get the last word. Men sometimes become fractious from pure monotony. When they are unable to find subjects for profitable conversation there arises a propensity to "nag" and find fault. In a Russian story, the title of which in English is "Buried Alive," two prisoners are talking in the night, and one relates: "I had got, somehow or other, in the way of beating her (his wife). Some days I would keep at it from morning till night. I did not know what to do with myself when I was not beating her. She used to sit crying, and I could not help feeling sorry for her, and so I beat her." Subsequently he murdered her. Are there not men above the class of wife-beaters who indulge in fault-finding, "nagging," and other forms of tongue-castigation? They have got into the habit. They do not know what to do with themselves when not so employed. The tears of their wives only irritate them. Of course some wives are quite capable of giving as much as they get. It is said that at a recent fashionable wedding, after the departure of the happy pair, a dear little girl, whose papa and mamma were among the guests, asked, with a child's innocent inquisitiveness: "Why do they throw things at the pretty lady in the carriage?" "For luck, dear," replied one of the bridesmaids. "And why," again asked the child, "doesn't she throw them back?" "Oh," said the young lady, "that would be rude." "No it wouldn't," persisted the dear little thing to the delight of her doting parents who stood by: "ma does."