For an insignificant man, originally but a cipher, who owes it to his wife that he is even the fraction that he is, to talk about 'woman knowing her place--he's head,' etc.! If he had given her the place that belonged to her, their value, not as individual figures, but as one number, would have been increased a thousand fold. I have made a calculation, and this is literally true, or rather, you will say, _figuratively_ true. Well, this kind of figures can not lie. 'The rose,' the Burmese say, 'imparts fragrance to the leaf in which it is folded.' Many a man has had a sweetness imparted to his character by the woman he has sheltered in his bosom--though some characters 'not all the perfume of Arabia could sweeten;' and, strange as it seem, most women would rather be folded in a _tobacco_ leaf than 'waste their sweetness on desert air.' Though it is a long time since I have been a man _lover_, I am not a man _hater_. I can not hate anything that has been so hallowed by woman's love,--_its_ magnetism gives a sort of attractive power to him. Notwithstanding all that has been said about woman's weakness, it is acknowledged that she has a pretty strong will of her own. Well, we need a strong will,--it is the great _centrifugal force_ that God has given to all. Only it must be subordinate to the _centripetal force_ of the universe--the Divine will. It is said that the centripetal force of our solar system is the Pleiad Alcyon. I know not whether the other stars of that cluster feel this attraction; if they do, what a centrifugal force the lost Pleiad must have had, to break away from 'the sweet influences' which, through so immense a distance, draw the sun with all his train. This is not without a parallel--when 'the morning stars sang together' over the new-born earth, one 'star of the morning' was not there to join in the chorus. But Old Sol will probably never so strongly assert _his_ centrifugality as to set such an example of _secession_ to his planets and comets. Pardon this astronomical digression. I have just returned from hearing an itinerant lecturer, and it will take a week to get the smoke of his magic lantern out of my eyes. If there is any error in these observations, blame the itinerant, not me. I had been low-spirited all day, had tried reading, work,--all of no avail. Dyspeptic views of life would present themselves to my mind. Some natures, and mine is of them, like the pendulum, need a weight attached to them to keep them from going too fast. But a wholesome sorrow is very different from this moping melancholy, when the thoughts run in one direction, till they almost wear a channel for themselves--when the channel is worn, there is _insanity_.