For an insignificant man, originally but a cipher, who owes it to his wife that he is even the fraction that he is, to talk about ’woman knowing her place—­he’s head,’ etc.!  If he had given her the place that belonged to her, their value, not as individual figures, but as one number, would have been increased a thousand fold.  I have made a calculation, and this is literally true, or rather, you will say, figuratively true.  Well, this kind of figures can not lie.

‘The rose,’ the Burmese say, ’imparts fragrance to the leaf in which it is folded.’  Many a man has had a sweetness imparted to his character by the woman he has sheltered in his bosom—­though some characters ’not all the perfume of Arabia could sweeten;’ and, strange as it seem, most women would rather be folded in a tobacco leaf than ’waste their sweetness on desert air.’  Though it is a long time since I have been a man lover, I am not a man hater.  I can not hate anything that has been so hallowed by woman’s love,—­its magnetism gives a sort of attractive power to him.

Notwithstanding all that has been said about woman’s weakness, it is acknowledged that she has a pretty strong will of her own.  Well, we need a strong will,—­it is the great centrifugal force that God has given to all.  Only it must be subordinate to the centripetal force of the universe—­the Divine will.

It is said that the centripetal force of our solar system is the Pleiad Alcyon.  I know not whether the other stars of that cluster feel this attraction; if they do, what a centrifugal force the lost Pleiad must have had, to break away from ‘the sweet influences’ which, through so immense a distance, draw the sun with all his train.  This is not without a parallel—­when ‘the morning stars sang together’ over the new-born earth, one ‘star of the morning’ was not there to join in the chorus.

But Old Sol will probably never so strongly assert his centrifugality as to set such an example of secession to his planets and comets.

Pardon this astronomical digression.  I have just returned from hearing an itinerant lecturer, and it will take a week to get the smoke of his magic lantern out of my eyes.  If there is any error in these observations, blame the itinerant, not me.

I had been low-spirited all day, had tried reading, work,—­all of no avail.  Dyspeptic views of life would present themselves to my mind.  Some natures, and mine is of them, like the pendulum, need a weight attached to them to keep them from going too fast.  But a wholesome sorrow is very different from this moping melancholy, when the thoughts run in one direction, till they almost wear a channel for themselves—­when the channel is worn, there is insanity.

Neither are my gloomy religious views to-day those that will regenerate the world.  Those lines of Dr. Watts,—­’We should suspect some danger nigh When we possess delight,’—­it is said, were written after a disappointment in love—­it was ‘sour grapes’ that morning—­with the grave divine.