VANCE.--"Because I have no wish to be doubled up! Moreover, man is like a napkin, the more neatly the housewife doubles him, the more carefully she lays him on the shelf. Neither can a man once doubled know how often he may be doubled. Not only his wife folds him in two, but every child quarters him into a new double, till what was a wide and handsome substance, large enough for anything in reason, dwindles into a pitiful square that will not cover one platter,--all puckers and creases, smaller and smaller with every double, with every double a new crease. Then, my friend, comes the washing-bill! and, besides all the hurts one receives in the mangle, consider the hourly wear and tear of the linen-press! In short, Shakspeare vindicates the single life, and depicts the double in the famous line, which is no doubt intended to be allegorical of marriage, "'Double, double, toil and trouble.' Besides, no single man can be fairly called poor. What double man can with certainty be called rich? A single man can lodge in a garret, and dine on a herring: nobody knows; nobody cares. Let him marry, and he invites the world to witness where he lodges, and how he dines. The first necessary a wife demands is the most ruinous, the most indefinite superfluity; it is Gentility according to what her neighbours call genteel. Gentility commences with the honeymoon; it is its shadow, and lengthens as the moon declines. When the honey is all gone, your bride says, 'We can have our tea without sugar when quite alone, love; but, in case Gentility drop in, here's a bill for silver sugar-tongs!' That's why I'm single." "Economy again, Vance." "Prudence,--dignity," answered Vance, seriously; and sinking into a revery that seemed gloomy, he shot back to shore. CHAPTER II. Mr. Vance explains how he came to grind colours and save half-pence. --A sudden announcement. The meal was over; the table had been spread by a window that looked upon the river. The moon was up: the young men asked for no other lights; conversation between them--often shifting, often pausing--had gradually become grave, as it usually does with two companions in youth; while yet long vistas in the Future stretch before them deep in shadow, and they fall into confiding talk on what they wish,--what they fear; making visionary maps in that limitless Obscure. "There is so much power in faith," said Lionel, "even when faith is applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man be but firmly persuaded that he is born to do, some day, what at the moment seems impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies. Surely, when you were a child at school, you felt convinced that there was something in your fate distinct from that of the other boys, whom the master might call quite as clever,--felt that faith in yourself which made you sure that you would be one day what you are."