Amen! but what business have I with palatial residences? What more can I possibly want, than a spacious, comfortable house? Do _I_ want buhl _escritoires_? Do I want or _molu_ things? Do I know anything about pictures and statues? In the name of heaven do I want rose-pink bed-curtains to give my grizzly old phiz a delicate “uroral hue,” as Cream Cheese says of Mrs. P.’s complexion? Because I have made fifty thousand this last year in Timbuctoo bonds, must I convert it all into a house, so large that it will not hold me comfortably,--so splendid that I might as well live in a porcelain vase, for the trouble of taking care of it,--so prodigiously “palatial” that I have to skulk into my private room, put on my slippers, close the door, shut myself up with myself, and wonder why I married Mrs. Potiphar? This house is her doing. Before I married her, I would have worn yellow silk breeches on ‘Change if she had commanded me--for love. Now I would build her two houses twice as large as this, if she required it--for peace. It’s all over. When I came home from China I was the desirable Mr. Potiphar, and every evening was a field-day for me, in which I reviewed all the matrimonial forces. It is astonishing, now I come to think of it, how skilfully Brigadier-General Mrs. Pettitoes deployed those daughters of hers; how vigorously Mrs. Tabby led on her forlorn hope; and how unweariedly, Murat-like, Mrs. De Famille charged at the head of her cavalry. They deserve to be made Marshals of France, all of them. And I am sure, that if women ought ever to receive honorary testimonials, it is for having “married a daughter well.” That’s a pretty phrase! The mammas marry, the misses are married. And yet, I don’t see why I say so. I fear I am getting sour. For certainly, Polly’s mother didn’t marry Polly to me. I fell in love with her, the rest followed. Old Gnu says that it’s true Polly’s mother didn’t marry her, but she did marry herself, to me. {Illustration}