The failure to perform this task has kindled the fagots about the stake where heretics perished for obstinacy.

It is not a week, by the way, since I heard a woman, gently nurtured and intellectual, lament that those “old Pilgrim forefathers were so disagreeably obstinate.”  She “wondered that their generation did not send them to the scaffold instead of across the sea.”

Inability to suffer the rest of the world to be mistaken has set a nation by the ears, broken hearts and fortunes, and separated more chief friends than all other alienating causes combined.  Many self-deluding souls set down their impatience with others’ errors to a spirit of benevolence.  They love their friends too dearly, they have too sincere a desire for the welfare of acquaintances, to let them hold mischievous tenets.

The cause of variance may appear contemptible to an indifferent third party.

To the average reasoner who has no personal concern in the debate, it may seem immaterial at what date Mrs. Jenkyns paid her last visit to Boston.  She is positive that it was in March, 1889.  Mr. Jenkyns is as certain that she accompanied him thither in April of that year.  She establishes her position by the fact that she left her baby for the first time when the cherub was ten months old, and there is the Family Bible to prove that he was born May 10, 1888.  Is she likely to be mistaken on such a point when she cried all night in Boston and the bereft infant wailed all night in New York?  What does Charles take her for?  Hasn’t he said, himself, dozens of times, that there is no use arguing as to times and seasons with a woman who verifies these by her children’s ages?  Mr. Jenkyns has said so—­but with a difference.  There is no use arguing with a woman in any circumstances, whatsoever.  That Emma tries to carry her point now by lugging in the poor little kid, who has nothing whatever to do with the case, is but another proof of the inconsequence of the sex.  He has the stub of his check-book to show that he paid the hotel bill in Boston, April 11, 1889.  Figures cannot lie.  Mrs. Charles Jenkyns challenges the check-book on the spot—­and the wrangle goes on until she seeks her chamber to have her cry out, and he storms off to office or club, irritated past forbearance by the pig-headed perversity of a creature he called “angel” with every third breath on their wedding journey to Boston in 1886.

Each of the combatants was confident, after the first exchange of shots, that the other was in error.  Half an hour’s quarreling left both doubly confident of the truth which was self-evident from the outset.  It is sadly probable that neither will ever confess, to himself or to herself, that the only wise course for either to pursue would have been to let ignorance have its perfect work, by abstaining from so much as a hint of contradiction.

“I don’t see how you held your temper and your tongue!” said one man to another, as a self-satisfied acquaintance strutted away from the pair after a monologue of ten minutes upon a matter of which both of his companions knew infinitely more than he.  “I hadn’t patience to listen to him, much less answer him good-humoredly—­he is such a fool!”