The silky-coated canine knows as well as I do that he is in for an afternoon a-wood. He has the inclination to leap and roll and essay to jump out of his hide. Yet the only answer he dare give to the inquiry is an appealing glance from his hazel orbs up at his master's immovable face. Yes, my dog Charlie is sober and sensible, and I am proud of these characteristics and their usefulness to me before the gun.
“Good-bye, little woman!” I sing out cheerily to my wife as I pass down the hall. She comes to the door to see me off. Sometimes, perhaps, a man will find his adieu on an occasion of this kind responded to uncordially, not to say frigidly, or perhaps not at all. But he must not grieve deeply over it or let it act as an excitative of his mean moroseness or angry passion. Think the thing all over. You are to be far away from home. Why should not the thought of the vacant chair—next to that of the demonstrative and exacting baby at meal time—rise up and sadden your wife? Can you wonder at her distant bearing as she foresees how she will sigh “for the touch of a vanished hand”—on the coal scuttle and water pail? Of course, she will “miss your welcome footsteps”—carrying in kindlings, and the “dear, familiar voice”—calling up the chickens. And so you cannot in reason expect her invariably to answer your kindly adios in a gladsome, gleesome, wholly satisfied sort of way. But never you go away without the goodbye on your part—the honest, manly, loving-toned good-bye that will ring in her ears in your absence and cause her to fancy that perhaps you are not such a selfish old bear after all.
With some of us men—only a limited few, of course, and we are not inclined to think over and enumerate them—it is unhappily the case that
We have cheerful words for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest;
But oft for our own the bitter tone,
Though we love our own the best.