"Please say, 'There is no way, etc.,' for unless you yourself speak categorically, the sentences grate upon my ear. I can ask questions myself, without experiencing the slightest inconvenience, but the moment I am myself interrogated, every nerve in me quivers with torture. No, I am afraid it is impossible to find a woman who will eschew the interrogative form of proposition, and limit herself to the affirmative and negative varieties; who will, for mere love of me, invariably place the verb after the noun, and unalterably give the subject the precedence over the predicate. Often and often, when my Diana, in all her dazzling charms, looks up pleadingly into my face, I feel towards her as Ahasuerus felt towards the suppliant Queen Esther, and I yearn to stretch out my reporter's pencil towards her, and to say: 'Ask me what you will--even if it be half my income--so long as you do not ask me a question.'" "But isn't there--I mean there is--such a thing obtainable as a dumb wife?" "Mutes are for funerals, and not for marriages. Besides, then, everybody would be asking me why I married her. No, the more I think of it, the more I see the futility of my dream of matrimonial felicity. Why, a question lies at the very threshold of marriage--'Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?'--and to put up the banns is to loose upon yourself an interviewer in a white-tie! No, leave me to my unhappy destiny. I must dree my weird. And anything your lordship can do in the way of enabling me to dree it by soliciting my Diana into the Old Maids' Club, shall be received with the warmest thanksgiving and will allow me to remain your lordship's most grateful and obedient servant, Daniel Wilkins." "Enough!" said Lord Silverdale, deeply moved, "I will send her a circular. But do you really think you would be happy if you lost her?" "If," said the _Moon_-man moodily. "It would require a great many 'ifs' to make me happy. As I once wrote: If cash were always present, And business always paid; If skies were always pleasant, And pipes were never laid; If toothache emigrated, Dyspepsia disappeared, And babies were cremated, And boys and girls were speared; If shirts were always creamy, And buttons never broke; If eyes were always beamy, And all could see a joke; If ladies never fumbled At railway pigeon holes; New villas never crumbled, And lawyers boasted souls; If beer was never swallowed, And cooks were never drunk, And trades were never followed, And thoughts were never thunk; If sorrow never troubled, And pleasure never cloyed, And animals were doubled, And humans all destroyed; _Then_--if there were no papers, And more words rhymed with "giving"-- Existence would be capers, And life be worth the living.