“But it is a most serious subject after all. If a man makes a mistake in any other matter it is easily remedied; a day’s work, and he is as well as ever, but a mistake in love is not so easily mended. It may make life a failure, and cause a man to rest uneasily in his grave. If I should leave a wife at death, and she should marry again, my very clay would cry out in agony at the thought. Under such circumstances I should long to be an unhappy ghost, that I might be free to walk the earth and fill her nights with terror. I hope I am not naturally of an ugly disposition, but if this misfortune should happen to me, I would resign my place in heaven and join the devils, in order that I might be wicked and cruel in my revenge.” I had never seen Jo in such a serious mood before, and mentioned it. His old, cheerful smile returned for a moment as he made some good-natured response, but as he kept on thinking it was soon replaced with a frown. Mateel seemed to enjoy his mood, and encouraged it by saying that a man had a different opinion of love every year of his life. “I never had an opinion on the subject at all until this year,” was his reply, “but I will tell you what I think of it next year, and the next. If I am of the same opinion then as now, you can give me the credit that my first impressions represented me. My first impressions of the subject are that I would as soon marry a widow as a girl who had been in love before. If I were the king of a country I would punish second marriage with death, and make it unlawful for a man or woman to be engaged more than once, thus preventing the marital unhappiness which I am sure always results when either the wife or husband knows the other has been in love before.” Mateel laughed so heartily over this absurd idea that I joined her in spite of myself, though I knew Jo was very serious, and he looked at us both as though we were attending his funeral and in good spirits over the grave. “I came here to pass a pleasant evening,” I said to him, “but if you continue in this humor we shall all have the horrors presently.” “I shouldn’t have begun,” he said, walking over to the music rack (to look for a hornpipe, I thought), “but I have said no more than I really feel. We will settle it with that, and I will never make you uncomfortable again by referring to the subject.” Having selected a more cheerful song we tried to sing it together, but it was a failure, and the evening dragged heavily after that, so much so that Jo announced his intention to go quite early. “I was never gloomy in my life before,” he said to Mateel on parting. “I don’t know what caused me to be to-night, for I am usually happier here than anywhere else. It must have been the gloomy poet whose song you sang. I hope you will forgive me. When I come again we will not speak of love. I know so little of it that I can’t be entertaining talking about it.”