In a house inhabited by the otherwise-minded--and one member of a family is enough to set the whole ruck awry--nothing is allowed to go smoothly or by default; nothing can be done without endless discussion; and all the well-oiled casters of compromise, good-nature, 'it does not signify,' &c., by which life runs easily in most places are rusted or broken. At table there is an incessant cross-fire of objections and of arguments, more or less intemperately conducted and never coming to a satisfactory conclusion. There are so many places too, which have been rubbed sore by this perpetual chafing, that a stranger to the secrets of the domestic pathology is kept not only in a fever of annoyance, but in an ague of dread, at the temper shown about trifles, and the deadly offence that seems to lurk behind quite ordinary topics of conversation. Not knowing all that has gone before, he is not prepared for the present uncomfortable aspect of things, and in fact is like a boy reading algebra, understanding nothing of what he sees, though the symbolizing letters are familiar enough to him. The family quarrel about everything; and when they do not quarrel they argue. If one wants to do something that must be done in concert, the others would die rather than unite; and days, seasons and wishes can never be got to work themselves into harmonious coalition. When they are out 'enjoying themselves'--language is arbitrary and the sense of words not always clear--they cannot agree on anything; and you may hear them fire off scornful squibs of otherwise-mindedness across the rows of prize flowers or in the intervals of one of Beethoven's sonatas. And if they cannot find cause for disagreement on the merits of the subject before them, they find it in each other. For otherwise-mindedness is like the ragged little princess in the German fairy tale, who proved her royal blood by being unable to sleep on the top of seven feather-beds--German feather-beds--beneath all of which one single bean had been placed as the test of her sensibility. Give it but the chance of a scuffle, the ghost of a coat-tail to tread on, an imaginary chicken-bone among the down, and you may be sure that the opportunity will not be lost. When we are on the look-out for beans we shall find them beneath even seven feather-beds; and when shillelahs abound there will never be wanting the trail of a coat-tail across the path. So we find when we have to do with the otherwise-minded who will not take things pleasantly, and can never be got to see either beauty or value in their surroundings. Let one of these have a saint for a wife, and he will tell you saints are bores and sinners the only house-mates to be desired. Let him change his state, and this time pick up the sinner in longing for whom he has so often vexed the poor saint's soul, and he will find domestic happiness to consist in the companionship of a seraph of the most exalted kind. If he has Zenobia,