intentions and playful mind is a sight. What the
poor maiden who loves him for his good
qualities, but who shudders at his asinine—what
she feels when he begins his playful pranks
about her surpasses the power of any feather
plucked from the wing of mortal goose to
describe. He pokes at her with his forefinger,
making dabs at her waist or her back, nothing
disguising, where another would have squeezed
her hand surreptitiously, and no one in the room
the wiser; he hides her bobbins and her scissors
behind sofa cushions, and puts her to the public
shame and confusion of beseeching him for their
restoration, he smiling imbecilely, and denying
that he has them, where another would have
hidden them in the hollow of his hand to have
given them back slyly: he follows her about
like a dog—all for genuine wholesome love—
but love in the raw, love unpolished by tact,
love loving clumsily, like the donkey with all
four legs on his master's lap, playing at Skye
terrierism, or King Charles's dainty doghood.
He jokes with her incessantly, but he is always
either rude or silly—sometimes both—he, poor
fellow, meaning to be neither—meaning only to
be witty and lively and playful and endearing,
meaning only 'to make his bray gentle as a
wood-pigeon's coo, or gracious as the skylark's
song. And " Oh, if he would only leave me
alone and hold his tongue before people!" sighs
poor Henrietta, plaiting her hair at night to
make it wavy in the morning; and " what a
pity it is that he is so stupid and awkward
when he is so good and clever!" It is pleasant,
though, to believe that Henrietta's husband
proves himself a far more endurable fellow than
her lover had been; for home is the place where
the inner god shows himself most clearly through
the coarse clay covering; so that one forgets at
last to fret over the ugly modelling of the outer
image, for love of the gracious form and tender
shadings of the hidden.

Another kind of man who gets much
misunderstood, is the man of vehement manners and
big words; whose social creed does not include
self-control in outward seeming, but who thinks
it no harm to truth or virtue if he put on the
likeness of an ogre simply to express the feelings
of a man. To hear him descant on the enormity
of the butcher sending him an inferior bit of
beef—well! it might have been the conscription
of the Poles, or General Butler at New Orleans,
that he was speaking of, to judge by his violence
of voice, and his wildness of gesture, and the
cannon-ball quality of his epithets. He pays
the penalty, of course; we all pay our respective
penalties in this world, due from imperfection.
He soon becomes notorious for having the worst
temper and being the fiercest and most angry
character of his circle. His circle misunderstand
him; and very naturally. In reality he is a jovial,
free-hearted, open-handed, impulsive savage—
a natural man, not softened by grace or made
spherical by civilisation, but retaining the child-
like frankness and undisciplined expression and
angularity of individualism, belonging to the true
savage, who asks no grace from man, and gives
none. Another form of this vehement man is
the angry philosopher who rails against evil
with the vigour of a Boanerges hurling
inherited thunderbolts; but who somehow
manages to slip into his philosophy so much of
individual feeling that his wrath against wrong-
doing is taken for selfish animosity, and he
loses all the grandeur of his philosophy in the
littleness of his personalities.

Mutual shyness is often the cause of long and
dangerous misunderstandings. You neglect to
answer your friend's invitation, or you fail to
meet her at the time appointed; and, meaning
to call and tell her why you did not keep
your engagement, forbear the half-dozen written
words, which would have made everything
straight and clear. Circumstances come in
between you and your designs; days pass into
weeks, and that visit is still unpaid. By this
time you are ashamed to write: it will look
too shabby after such a long neglect; and by
this time, too, you rather shirk the visit; it
being a disagreeable penance to your own self-
esteem to have to confess that you have been
rude and neglectful. So the days that have
passed into weeks lengthen out to mouths, and
the moment never comes when the amende
honorable is made absolute. Then your shyness
deepens and deepens, till at last you walk a mile
round to avoid the chance of meeting, and if
you hear that your friend will be at Mrs. A.'s
dinner or Mrs. B.'s ball, decline the invitation
hurriedly, literally "afraid to see her." On her
part it is much the same. She wondered at your
not keeping your engagement. She wondered
still more when you tendered no apology or
explanation; then she thought and cogitated, and
built up dreary Spanish castles for her woful
entertainment for months after, and never clearly
understood to her dying day, how it was that
her pleasant friendship with Mr. Blank was
so suddenly and completely routed, or what
she had said to offend him that he should cut her
so very dead. The same thing happens with letters
and friends at a distance. You mean to write—
oh, every day you mean it!—for weeks you say
nightly, "I must write to Mrs. Asterisk or to
Charley Star, to-morrow—I really must. My
dear, remind me that I write that letter to Mrs.
Asterisk or to Charley Star, to-morrow; it
positively must be done." To-morrow comes, and
my dear reminds you; but you find your day's
tithe more than you can pay, so you relegate
your long-owned letter to the limbo of good
intentions passed down to the traditional pavement.
This goes on for a perpetuity of to-morrows;
but the letter never sees the to-day when it gets
written; and at last you are too much ashamed
of yourself, and too awkward at an apology, to
attempt it at all. So Mrs. Asterisk or Charley
Star dwindles into nothing in your firmament;
and is soon lost out of the sweep of your
horizon. It is the same round—always the
same; first a venial offence against good manners,
then neglect to apologise, then shyness, lastly
severance; all arising out of a misunderstanding
and chariness of speech.