“Well now, if you are going to scold me, I’m sure I don’t want to go.  I’m sure, if everybody that stays at home, and has comfortable times, Sundays, instead of going out on missions, is heartless, there are a good many heartless people in the world.”

“I beg your pardon, my darling.  I didn’t mean, dear, that you were heartless, but that what you said sounded so.  I knew you didn’t really mean it.  I didn’t ask you, dear, to go to work,—­only to be company for me.”

“And I ask you to stay at home, and be company for me.  I’m sure it is lonesome enough here, and you are off on business almost all your days; and you might stay with me Sundays.  You could hire some poor, pious young man to do all the work over there.  There are plenty of them, dear knows, that it would be a real charity to help, and that could preach and pray better than you can, I know.  I don’t think a man that is busy all the week ought to work Sundays.  It is breaking the Sabbath.”

“But, Lillie, I am interested in my Sunday school.  I know all my people, and they know me; and no one else in the world could do for them what I could.”

“Well, I should think you might be interested in me:  nobody else can do for me what you can, and I want you to stay with me.  That’s just the way with you men:  you don’t care any thing about us after you get us.”

“Now, Lillie, darling, you know that isn’t so.”

“It’s just so.  You care more for your old missionary work, now, than you do for me.  I’m sure I never knew that I’d married a home-missionary.”

“Darling, please, now, don’t laugh at me, and try to make me selfish and worldly.  You have such power over me, you ought to be my inspiration.”

“I’ll be your common-sense, John.  When you get on stilts, and run benevolence into the ground, I’ll pull you down.  Now, I know it must be bad for a man, that has as much as you do to occupy his mind all the week, to go out and work Sundays; and it’s foolish, when you could perfectly well hire somebody else to do it, and stay at home, and have a good time.”

“But, Lillie, I need it myself.”

“Need it,—­what for?  I can’t imagine.”

“To keep me from becoming a mere selfish, worldly man, and living for mere material good and pleasure.”

“You dear old Don Quixote!  Well, you are altogether in the clouds above me.  I can’t understand a word of all that.”

“Well, good-by, darling,” said John, kissing her, and hastening out of the room, to cut short the interview.

Milton has described the peculiar influence of woman over man, in lowering his moral tone, and bringing him down to what he considered the peculiarly womanly level.  “You women,” he said to his wife, when she tried to induce him to seek favors at court by some concession of principle,—­“you women never care for any thing but to be fine, and to ride in your coaches.”  In Father Adam’s description of the original Eve, he says,—­