and therefore, of course, never had been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you have never been any one’s husband; and a married man, because you have a wife living; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have been deprived of that wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia in the first place, while things were so mixed.  And by this time I have got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you—­I might get confused and fail to make myself understood.  I think I could take up the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile, perhaps I could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed at all, or that you are dead now, and consequently don’t need the faithless Edwitha—­I think I could do that, if it would afford you any comfort.

“Arthur Augustus.”—­No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn’t answer so well for a bouquet; you will hurt somebody if you keep it up.  Turn your nosegay upside down, take it by the stems, and toss it with an upward sweep.  Did you ever pitch quoits? that is the idea.  The practice of recklessly heaving immense solid bouquets, of the general size and weight of prize cabbages, from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and very reprehensible.  Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just after Signorina had finished that exquisite melody, “The Last Rose of Summer,” one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the atmosphere of applause, and if she hadn’t deployed suddenly to the right, it would have driven her into the floor like a shinglenail.  Of course that bouquet was well meant; but how would you like to have been the target?  A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as you don’t try to knock her down with it.

“Young mother.”—­And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy forever?  Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks the same of its own calf.  Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly, but still she thinks it nevertheless.  I honor the cow for it.  We all honor this touching maternal instinct wherever we find it, be it in the home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed.  But really, madam, when I come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find that the correctness of your assertion does not assert itself in all cases.  A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short years, no baby is competent to be a joy “forever.”  It pains me thus to demolish two-thirds of your pretty sentiment in a single sentence; but the position I hold in this chair requires that I shall not permit you to deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures of speech.  I know a female baby, aged eighteen