10.  If my friend were suddenly to lose this home by the death of the wife, he would receive an unmeasured sympathy from all thoughtful men not included in the small class who never understood what there was in “Home, Sweet Home,” to set people to humming it.  If he were to have this wrenched from him by a sudden awakening of his wife to all his faults, and as blind an infatuation with the faults of another man as was once extended to his own, he would know just how Daniel McFarland felt.  My friend is induced to believe, however, that his wife will be strongly under his influence so long as he does not inspire her with fear.  He will not pound her unless he falls to whisky-guzzling, which, considering that he does not yet use tobacco, is impossible.

SO MUCH OF A PARTICULAR HOME.

By the study of other women than his own wife (which is a very unjust mode of study) man learns to hate women in general.  By observing his wife, however, he is inclined to love all her sex.  Again, by contemplating himself he falls into detestation of all humankind.  Such “men” as young Mr. Bachelor have spent their time in exhaustive subjective researches.  They know themselves too well.  They should, in reforming, take an easy step upward, and, by contemplating the good points of Swift’s Yahoos, somewhat elevate their opinion of the species which they so graciously ornament!  A green old age is universally admired.  The color of greenness at thirty, however, is not fashionable.  If I have lacked in charity in defending the wisdom of married life, it is because I have seen too much grass thrown at bad boys.  When you hear a fool prating of the misery of married men as compared with single men, answer him according to his folly, or, perhaps better, answer him not at all.

BACHELORS.

     I would not my unhoused free condition
     Put into circumspection and confine,
     For the sea’s worth.—­Shakspeare.

    When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live
    till I were married.—­Shakspeare.

Nothing is further from the single man’s thoughts than that he will continue in the single state all his life.  He expects, when the young woman meets his gaze who satisfies either his esthetic or pecuniary ideas, generally the latter, or both, to take that young woman to his bosom and begin married life.  This is a natural state of mind, and there is no harm in indulging it.  It shall be the object of a few of these pages to present such aspects of the unmarried state of man as have principally commended themselves to general attention.  The bachelor has plenty of arguments to keep him single while he is not in love.  He thinks the arguments keep him single, good fellow.  He says, as I heard one of them say:  “I would ask the unbiased observer what there is in the world, after all, to induce a