The Opinions of a Philosopher | Page 8

mistrust me," I continued,
solemnly drawing from my pocket the document in question.
Josephine took it like one dazed. She looked from me to it and back
again from it to me, then with a joyous laugh she exclaimed, "Really? It
is really true? Oh, Fred, you are an angel!"
"No, my dear," I answered, as she flung her arms about my neck--for
she does so still once in a while--"I am merely a philosopher who has
learned to recognize that what must be must be."
My wife was too much absorbed in her own mysterious mental
processes to take note of or analyze this observation. For a few
moments she was lost in a brown study, and gazed about her with a
glance that struck me as somewhat critical.
"You are an angel, Fred," she repeated, ruminantly. "You took me in
splendidly, didn't you? And to think of your doing it all by yourself!"
She wandered back into the dining-room, and thence to the hall, where

she stood peering up the stairway at the skylight. "Yes," she continued
presently, in a judicial, contemplative tone, "I think it will do very well
on the whole. I am not perfectly sure that the laundress will be satisfied
with the arrangement of the laundry, and I don't see exactly, Fred, what
you are to do for a dressing-room, when we have more than one visitor.
I am out of conceit with the tinting of the drawing-room ceiling,
and--and several of the mantelpieces are hideous. But, on the other
hand, the dining-room is perfectly lovely, there is no end of
closet-room, and the kitchen is a gem. Oh, thank you, Fred, thank you
ever so much. I really never expected that we could afford to leave the
dear old house. It will almost break my heart to leave it, too, although it
is so dirty."
Josephine's guns were spiked, as it were. Having declared that the
house was ideal, she was barred from utterly blasting it in the next
breath. To tell the truth, I felt as a consequence decidedly perky and
inclined to perform the double-shuffle or something of the sort quite
out of keeping with the traditional repose of a philosopher. It was so
obvious to me that I had escaped weeks, if not months, of misery by the
ruse which I had adopted that I was fain to dance with joy. Had I
allowed Josephine to pick out a house she would have felt obliged,
even though she was thoroughly satisfied with the first she saw, to
inspect from top to bottom every other in the market, for fear that she
might see something which pleased her better, and I should have been
compelled to accompany her. There are a few advantages after all in
being of a philosophic turn of mind.
And here is another bit of philosophy for you which I am thoroughly
convinced is sound. A woman adroitly handled will permit her husband
to choose a new unfurnished house for her without serious demur. But
let the lord and master beware who takes it upon himself to do the
furnishing also stealthily and of his own accord. I will confess that it
did occur to me at first to put through the whole business at one fell
swoop--house, wall-papers, dados, chandeliers, carpets, and curtains. I
even went so far as to cross the street one day with the intention of
asking Poultney Briggs, who makes a business of letting people know
what they ought to like in the line of interior decoration, to name his

price to complete the job. But my courage failed me at the last minute,
for I had a presentiment that Josephine would be disappointed if I did.
You see I know her pretty well after all these years.
"I should never have forgiven you, Fred--never!" said my better-half,
emphatically, when I told her how near I had come to the crucial act. "I
should have hated everything. Besides, no one nowadays thinks
anything of Poultney Briggs as a decorator. He is terribly behind the
times."
I accepted this reproof and the accompanying verdict with becoming
meekness. I remember that when we first went to house-keeping
Poultney Briggs was in the van of artistic progress, and that no one was
to be mentioned in the same breath with him; yet now, apparently, he
was of the sere-and-yellow-leaf order, professionally speaking. And I
was old fogy enough not to have been aware of it. Clearly, I was not fit
to be entrusted with the selection of even a door-mat, to say nothing of
the wall-papers and carpets. It was with a thankful heart over my
foresight that I relinquished to Josephine the whole task of furnishing,
with the sole reservation that I should have my say