The way to make a woman careful, methodical, and business-like is to trust her. She may at first make a few mistakes over her banking account, but she will buy her experience, and will be very foolish if she does not make her pounds go as far as they should, and keep a reserve in her pocket. If more men only continued the little courtesies of the lover to the wife, those sweet attentions that went so far to win the woman, then all would go smoothly. Married life should be one long courtship. Women appreciate appreciation. Alas, instead, matrimony is too often a ceaseless wrangle. Men scold and women nag. Foolish both. I am no man-hater, far, far from it. Men are delightful; but one inconsiderate or cruel man can so easily wreck a home and bring misery on his wife and family, and men are sometimes a little selfish. Aren’t they? Hobbies are delightful—they make existence so much more interesting—a collection of teapots or buttons, miniatures or pewter. It really doesn’t much matter what it is, but it gives one pleasure to poke about in old shops, in odd towns, and secure an occasional prize. Hobbying is like fly-fishing. It takes a deal of patience; but it is worth the play for the joy of landing the fish. Hobbies, Max Nordau tells us, are a sign of weakness and degeneration, even of madness. Our nicknacks, our love of red and yellow, and things artistic, tend to show mental lowering. All this applies to me. I must be far gone, and yet I am happier than the hobbiless being, who to my mind is as depressing as a dose of calomel. Any collection of facts or fancies, while in itself an occupation, eventually leads to something tangible. Life is so much more entertaining and engrossing if we take the trouble to interest ourselves in something or someone. Surely, it is a good thing to encourage children from their earliest days to be interested outside their own wee sphere; to teach them to work and sew, make scrap-books for the hospitals, baskets or toys for poorer and less fortunate children, even to learn geography from stamps. It is in the nursery we acquire our first knowledge of life. Occupations and hobbies should be fostered in the earliest years; carpentry, wood-carving, metal-work all being taken up in turn by boys; cooking, sewing, painting, by girls, as well as the thousand-and-one useful works they can do in their own homes. The business of idleness is appalling—the overwork of attainment is worth the trouble. CHAPTER XX AMERICAN NOTES America is a vast country, likewise a vast subject to tackle. Everything there is vast, its mercantile projects, its successes, its catastrophes—but, above all, it possesses a vast wealth in the warm hearts of its kindly people. I have so many friends on the other side of the “herring pond,” that my memory lingers with pleasure and interest in the United States.