Years afterwards a friend said to him in congratulation, "Well, James, I hear you married your daughter well."
"I did, sir, and I got him cheap." Then in a whisper, "He was divilish owld."
The computation by which the years of the bridegroom were set against the purchase money--in other words, the bride's dowry--must have been an intricate one, involving, one would say, the tables of insurance, and the best skill of the nate little clerk.
Congratulations, not unmixed with some genial surprise, were proffered to another parent on the marriage of his daughter, a person by no means in her first youth, and possessed of but one eye.
"Sure I had to give him ten pounds agin' the blind eye," explained the father of the bride, with unimpaired cordiality.
There is here no material, of the accepted sort, for a playwright; no unsatisfied yearnings and shattered ideals, nothing but remarkable common sense, and a profound awe for the Sacrament of Marriage. Marriage, humourous, commercial, and quite unlovely, is the first act; the second is mere preoccupation with an accomplished destiny; the last is usually twilight and much faithfulness. The dialogue is a masterpiece throughout, epigram, heart-piercing pathos, with humour, heavenly and inveterate, lubricating all. Perhaps the clue to success lies here, in the mutual possession of agreeability and the good nature that goes with the best agreeability; certain it is that with a command of repartee that makes fighting an artistic enjoyment, their conjugal battles are insignificant.
The two-fold heart of the race beats everywhere in the confusion; gross worldliness, and a matrimonial standard clear and unquestioned as the stars; Love the negligible quantity, and attachment the rule. It is for us, more singly bent on happiness, to aim at rapture and to foreknow disappointment.
I admit that I hesitate at the thought of pressing into the elect company of those who have discoursed upon gardens. From Lord Bacon down to the Poet Laureate, from the Poet Laureate up to that self-sufficing and yet voluble "Elizabeth," of whose German Garden all the craft have read, there seems no inch of garden sod that has been left unturned. I ask myself: Have I any original suggestions on, for example, The disbudding of 'Mums? (a term of horrid familiarity that I have seen applied to Chrysanthemums). Any high thoughts on Manures? Any special convictions in the matter of mulches?
