her husband should go freely into all the work and the pleasure of life.  Whenever he leaves her, her farewell is not, “How soon do you think you shall come back?  At what hour, or day, may I look for you?” but, “Now, pray stay just as long as you enjoy it.  If you hurry home one hour sooner for the thought of me, I shall be wretched.”  It really seems almost as if the longer he stayed away,—­hours, days, weeks even,—­the happier she were.  By this sweet and wise unselfishness she has succeeded in realizing the whole blessedness of wifehood far more than most women who have health.  But we doubt if any century sees more than one such woman as she is.

Another large class, next to that of invalids the most difficult to deal with, is made up of people who are by nature or by habit uncomfortably sensitive or irritable.  Who has not lived at one time or other in his life in daily contact with people of this sort,—­persons whose outbreaks of temper, or of wounded feeling still worse than temper, were as incalculable as meteoric showers?  The suppressed atmosphere, the chronic state of alarm and misgiving, in which the victims of this species of tyranny live are withering and exhausting to the stoutest hearts.  They are also hardening; perpetually having to wonder and watch how people will “take” things is apt sooner or later to result in indifference as to whether they take them well or ill.

But to define all the shapes of private tyranny would require whole histories; it is safe, however, to say that so far as any human being attempts to set up his own individual need or preference as law to determine the action of any other human being, in small matters or great, so far forth he is a tyrant.  The limit of his tyranny may be narrowed by lack of power on his part, or of response on the part of his fellows; but its essence is as purely tyrannous as if he sat on a throne with an executioner within call.

Thirdly. Longevity of private tyrants.  We have not room under this head to do more—­nor, if we had all room, could we do better—­than to quote a short paragraph from George Eliot’s immortal Mrs. Poyser:  “It seems as if them as aren’t wanted here are th’ only folks as aren’t wanted i’ th’ other world.”

Margin.

Wide-margined pages please us at first sight.  We do not stop to ask why.  It has passed into an accepted rule that all elegant books must have broad, clear margins to their pages.  We as much recognize such margins among the indications of promise in a book, as we do fineness of paper, clearness of type, and beauty of binding.  All three of these last, even in perfection, could not make any book beautiful, or sightly, whose pages had been left narrow-margined and crowded.  This is no arbitrary decree of custom, no chance preference of an accredited authority.  It would be dangerous to set limit to the power of fashion in any thing; and yet it seems almost safe to say that not even fashion itself can ever make a