Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/20

 Here, then, is simply the little bit of ground upon which my wife and I do not exactly pull together. Giving, as I do, all due precedence to business, yet, business over and done with for its time, the mind, as I hold, may betake itself to other, nay, call them even higher things. Thus I have a decided turn for statistics and certain departments of science, the marvels of astronomy in particular. But my wife has not, and makes no secret of her impatience with that sort of thing. "My stars! Nunnie," she will say—my Christian name, by the way, is Nunsowe, after my maternal relations—"leave those other stars to their own courses, and stick you to business; you do best at that." Yes, I flatter myself that I do pretty fairly at business, and in that opinion we are also agreed.

But neither wife nor business are to drive me out of science, and I shall have a deal to say on that high score ere we reach my last chapter. If one friend does not appreciate, another does. Thus an influential customer at our shop got me proposed and passed as a member of the Statistical and Astronomical Societies. My wife growled at first at the heavy subscription money. But presently the letters I could put at the end of my name began to take her fancy; and when, at one of the soirees, a live knight actually helped her to coffee, while she occupied a sofa just vacated by, and still warm from, a real countess, I heard no more objections, even upon the money question.

We are both, as I trust and believe, good Church people. She is somewhat High, at any rate as compared with her husband. She regards him, and perhaps, in a comparative sense, truly enough, as Low