"'Bruce, this affair will come to a trial,--the damages will be laid at ten thousand,--the costs will be about three more. Can you meet that?' "'No,' said I, 'I 'm a younger son,--I 've got my commission in the Guards, and eight thousand in the "Three-and-a-Half's" to live on, so that I can't.' "'What _can_ you pay?' said he. "'I can stand two thousand,' said I, boldly. "'Say three,' said he,--'say three.' "And I said, 'Three be it,' and the affair was settled--an exposure escaped--a reputation rescued--and a clear saving of something like ten thousand pounds; and this just because we chanced both of us to be 'men of the world.' For look at the thing calmly; how should any of us have been bettered by a three days' publicity at Nisi Prius,--one's little tendernesses ridiculed by Thesiger, and their soft speeches slanged by Serjeant Wilkins. Turn it over in your mind how you may, and the same conclusion always meets you. The husband, it is true, gets less money; but then he has no obloquy. The wife escapes exposure; and the 'other party' is only mulct to one-fourth of his liability, and at the same time is exempt from all the ruffianism of the long robe! A vulgarly minded fellow might have said, 'What's the woman's reputation to _me?_ I'll defend the action,--I'll prove this, that, and t'other. I'll engage the first counsel at the bar, and fight the battle out. I don't care a jot about being blackguarded before a jury, lampooned in the papers, and caricatured in the windows,' he might say; 'what signifies to _me_ what character I hold before the world,--I have neither sons nor daughters to suffer from my disgrace.' I know that all these and similar reasons might prompt a man of a certain stamp to regret this course, and say, 'Be it so. Let there be a trial!' But neither _you_ nor _I_ Dodd, could see the matter in this light. There is this peculiarity about a man of the world, that not alone he sees rightly, but he sees quickly; he judges passing events with a kind of instinctive appreciation of what will be the tone of society generally, and he says to himself, 'There are doubtless elements in this question that I would wish otherwise. I would, perhaps, say _this_ is not exactly to my taste; I don't like _that_;' but whoever yet found that he broke his leg exactly in the right place? What man ever discovered that the toothache ever attacked the very tooth he wanted! I take it, Dodd, that you are a man who has seen a good deal of life; now did your heart ever bound with delight on seeing the outside of a bill of costs? or on hearing the well-known knock of a better known dun at your hall door? True philosophy consists in diminishing, so far as may be, the inevitable ills of life. Don't you agree with me?"