We had drifted into a little bay, under shelter of a high rocky point. I felt a sudden access of insane boldness, and taking both Ida's hands in mine, I ventured to kiss her open forehead. She took the kiss quietly, but with a certain queenly sense of homage due. "And now," she said, shaking off my hands and smiling archly, "let us row back toward Saratoga, for you know you have to pack up for Niagara."
"No," I answered, "I may as well put off my visit to the Falls till you can accompany me."
"Very well," said Ida quietly, "and then we shall go back to England and live near Oxford. I don't want you to give up the dear old University. I want you to teach me the way you look at things, and show me how to look at them myself. I'm not going to learn any Latin or Greek or stupid nonsense of that sort; and I'm not going to join the Women's Suffrage Association; but I like your English culture, and I should love to live in its midst."
"So you shall, Ida," I answered; "and you shall teach me, too, how to be a little less narrow and self-centred than we Oxford bachelors are apt to become in our foolish isolation."
So we expect to spend our honeymoon at Niagara.
THE CHILD OF THE PHALANSTERY.
"Poor little thing," said my strong-minded friend compassionately. "Just look at her! Clubfooted. What a misery to herself and others! In a well-organized state of society, you know, such poor wee cripples as that would be quietly put out of their misery while they were still babies."
"Let me think," said I, "how that would work out in actual practice. I'm not so sure, after all, that we should be altogether the better or the happier for it."