The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-04-24
THE PHILOSOPHERS BABY.

TIL En4AOOOfd6h BABY.
had been considering for about 8
year whether I should marry Winifred
Hanway, when I heard that she was
engaged to the philosopher. Why did
she accept him? It is true that he is
both imaginative and critical; but fac.
psychological hypothesis, and the To-
neighbor, do not usually rouse the
who is more fit to live, than to think
about life. He is certainly handsome,
but as certainly his clothes are barbar-
GUS. His trousers cannot keep their
shape for day; and his hats are never
kew. If he notices the rain he opens
an umbrella which might have served
as an Intellectual protection at the time
of the deluge if he finds out that it is
cold, he assumes a garment which
might have been the everyday garment
of Methuselah. His manners are as
strange as his appearance. He may
often be seen walking in the park at the
fashionable hour, with far-of look in
his eyes, and his hat thrust back as if
to lessen the external pressure on his
active brain more rarely you may hear
him bursting into enthusiasm in Pic
cadilly, though Piccadilly is the last
place in which a man should allow him
self to be enthusiastic. In short, though
he is true friend, he is an uncomfort-
able acquaintance and his volcanic ut
terances, after long periods of calm
contemplation, cause such shocks to
ones nerves as would be conveyed to
the Sunday citizen by the eruption of
Primrose Hill. But, if it was odd that
the beautiful Winifred Hanway should
marry my friend, it was yet more odd
that he should marry any one. There
were no topics more certain to excite an
explosion in the philosopher than the
excessive population of the country,
and the wholesome solitude of the
thinker. "How," he would fiercely ask,
"can a man think effectually on funda-
mental subjects who is compelled by
the despicable circumstances of his life
to exhaust his analytical faculty in con-
sidering how to pay his butcher, and
when to buy his Goals? tell You, sir,
1t is better to starve with cold and hun
ger than to debase ones noblest part
to game of skill with a grasping gro
cer." Again and again had heard him
declaim in this preposterous fashion !;
and, after all, he was going to the altar
like any other victim, and would doubt
less take house upon his back with
the docility of a snail.
/ could not solve the problem
would not give it up. So, full of the
determination to drag Diogenes out of
his tub, and the secret out of Diogenes,
[ stepped around the corner to offer my
congratulations. My friend was in his
study, apparently writing, really eating
a quill pen. He rose at me with a rush,
wrung my hand till it ached and blushed
rather uncomfortably. Congratulations
are the curse of the Briton. Whether
he is offering them or receiving them,
he is obliged to take refuge in intermit-
tent Misunderstanding and groans. But on
this occasion it was evident that the
had something ready to
say and nervously anxious to say
it. My dear fellow, I don't know
when-I really am so awfully glad, I
it's in every way so, such a satisfactory,
you know-I really do wish all possible,
and all that sort of thing you Know
when he burst in with a speech so flu
emily delivered, that knew was not
his earliest visitor that morning. "Of
course it's taken you by SURPRISE" he
said, I" as I knew it would; but the
truth is that have been thinking of it
for long time, and I am sure I am
right" Here tried to put in an ex-
preston of wonder at his new notion of
his duty, but he was bent on being rid
of the matter, and hurried on to his
reasons. "In the first place, said he,
EE hot syrkaoI &c
my domestic worries, my marriage will
transfer them in body to my wife;
and, secondly, when I consider the vast
of fools who are every day born
into the world, / am terrified by the
picture of what the next generation will
be, if the thinkers of this age are to be
without successors. Having discharged
his reasons in this wise, the orator
stood blinking at me as if he feared
but was too astounded at his
audacity to reply. Slowly
a loook of peace stole back into his face,
a pleasant light dawned in his eyes,
and the promise of a smile at the cor
ners of his mouth. His remarkable
fuency was gone, and indeed his voice
sounded quite choky when he said,
" Johnny, you don't know what an
angel she is" A light broke in upon
me. Philosopher, said. 81 believe
you are going to be married because
You fell in love ?" Perhaps you are
right" said the philosopher.
After the wedding the philosopher
and his wife went abroad for an indefi-
mite period, and their friends heard but
little of them. He wrote to nobody,
and she did not write to me. Yet there
were occasional rumors. Now they were
breathing the keen air of the Engadine,
now sinking to the chestnuts and vines
of Chiavenna; now he was flashing him
self to frenzy over the treasures of
Rome now she was gazing with sweet
northern eyes across the growing splen-
dor of the bay of Naples. Then they
were in Germany, and about to settle
for life in a university town but anon
had fled from it in haste after a long
nights dispute, in the course of which
my learned friend had well nigh come
to blows with the university's most cele-
brated professor.
At last l heard they were again in
and, full of enthusiasm, darted
round the corner to welcome them
home. Nobody was with them but Mrs.
Hanway, Winifred's mother. / would
enter unannounced and surprise the
philosopher. I entered unan1ounced,
and was surprised myself.
Was this the effect of matrimony or
of foreign travel? Each occupant of
the room was engaged in an exercise
wholly unconnected, as it seemed, with
those of the rest. My friends wife, the
lady whom had almost loved, queen of
all grace and loneliness, was appearing
and disappearing like q flash behind
the days Times, showing at the mo-
ments of disclosure face flushed with
excitement, and lustrous coils of hair
into the widest disorder,
while she accompanied the whole per-
Torrance with strange and inarticulate
sounds. Her mother, the same Mrs.
who was so perfect a model of
dress and carriage that many of her
lady friends were wont to lament among
themselves that she gave herself such
airs, was seated on the floor, dressed
for walking, but without her bonnet.
Yes, she was certainly drumming on an
inverted tea-tray with the wrong end of
the poker. And the philosopher? 1t
was perplexing, after three years sepa-
ration, to meet him thus. The philoso-
pher was cantering round the room on
AL tours, wearing on his head his own
waste paper basket. Briskly he can
tered round, ever and anon frisking like
5 lamb in spring time, until he reached