“Yes. Let people have partnerships as large as they like, and make savings thereby, if they find they can. But let them beware of the notion that any competition but the struggle for food is the cause of hardship; and that struggle must take place under both systems, unless the same means are used by both to prevent it. As for the question of time, the struggle will take place soonest under that system which affords the least stimulus to productive industry. “And, now, love, you have the pith of my speech, except of those best parts which you have many a time rehearsed to me, and I to you. Of the ‘hear, hears,’ and clappings, you learned enough last night.” “I wish I could have been there,” sighed the wife. “So do I. Well as you know the aspect of an attentive crowd, you can have little idea of the stimulating excitement of political meetings just now.” “I can imagine it. The true romance of human life lies among the poorer classes; the most rapid vicissitudes, the strongest passions, the most undiluted emotions, the most eloquent deportment, the truest experience are there. These things are marked on their countenances, and displayed by their gestures; and yet these things are almost untouched by our artists; be they dramatists, painters, or novelists. The richest know best what is meant by the monotony of existence, however little this may appear to their poor neighbours who see them driving about as if life depended on their speed, and traversing kingdoms and continents. Yet from the upper and middling classes are the fine arts mainly furnished with their subjects. This is wrong; for life in its reality cannot become known by hearsay; and by hearsay only is there any notion of it among those who feel themselves set above its struggles and its toils: that is, by the greater part of the aristocracy.” “Thank heaven! not by you or me,” replied her husband. “An uninformed observer might think that there is monotony before us at present, sitting as we are, watching the snow-flakes fall with the few leaves which had lingered aloft till now,—with weeks of retirement in prospect, and nothing apparent to wish or work for. Yet you have had enough, love, of struggle and toil to know what real life is; and I have, of late, begun to learn the same lesson. No fear of monotony for us!” “No fear; since there are all to live for as well as each, and each other. But, Henry, how is it that there is so little made known where it most wants to be known, of what real life is when trained by that best of educations, vicissitude?”