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 the other is a bath-tub. A man can stow his apparel in the veriest cupboard, and a shower-bath will give him more solid satisfaction than all the tubs in Christendom; but a woman must have as many hooks as Argus had eyes, and as for a shower-bath, there is nothing in the world over which she makes a greater to-do than wetting her hair. I determined, as the initial specification of my house, that there should not be a place to hang so much as a single skirt, and that the bathing arrangements should be limited to a shower and a slatted floor. A woman would think twice, I reasoned, before setting her cap at a man with a domicile so curiously limited.

It may appear to have been an extravagant precaution, and I might be asked why I could not rely upon the strength of my resolution; but, where matrimony is the peril to be avoided, there is no such thing as a superfluous safeguard. The most cautious of us have our moments of carelessness or abstraction, and,