"As I came to know him intimately, and to feel what a staunch, tender-hearted, domestic sort of individual he was, I began to wonder he had never married. One day I asked him in a joking way how a rich man like himself could reconcile it with his conscience to remain a bachelor in America, where there was such a preponderance of unmarried ladies to be supported? He made a wry face, and said he had assumed the maintenance of two spinster step-cousins: wasn't that his part? "'Or if you think it isn't, Hal, I'll tell you what I'll do,' he added, laughing. 'You marry yourself, and I'll support your wife. Won't that be fair?' "'Hardly fair for the lady,' I remarked, adding that I should pity the luckless unknown who should thus fail to secure him as her Benedict. "The idea seemed to amuse him immensely. "'You kindly insinuate that it would be a benevolence in me to take a wife,' said he with a twinkle in his eye. 'Now, I protest I'm not conceited enough to think that. On the contrary, if a woman should consent to give herself to me, I should consider the benevolence entirely on her side. Can't say I crave such a charity just at present, though,' he added in comic haste, stretching his long arms as if to waive the bequest. 'The fact is, Hal, I've never seen the girl I want. Being hard upon forty, it stands to reason I never shall see her: I fear she died young. May I trouble you to play Beethoven's Funeral March in respect to her memory?' "And so the subject dropped. "Timothy was no woman-hater, you understand. Indeed, he admired the whole sex, but in a collective way, as you might admire the Galaxy without preferring any individual star. Young ladies were to him nebulous and mysterious creations, to be reverenced from a distance: he never lavished upon one of them a tithe of the attentions he lavished upon me. I had terrible headaches in those days, and I shall never forget how patiently he would sit making passes over my head till the pain yielded to his touch, as it was sure to do sooner or later. He had more magnetism than any other man I knew. Detesting a dress-coat and white kids as he detested the machinations of the Evil One, he seldom went into society, but he was always ready for lectures and concerts, marching off to the hall with me on his arm as proudly as if I had been the most bewitching damsel. Excepting on Saturday, when I was usually engaged at the choir rehearsal, we were rarely separated of an evening.