The selection of a suitable person to take charge of this heterogenious assemblage, whose mental and moral natures were to be provided for as well as their physical wants, was found the most perplexing part of the work, being the subject in debate upon the afternoon alluded to, when Mr. Livingston proposed Milly as one possessing the necessary qualifications, greatly to the amazement of his matter-of-fact wife, who would never have perceived anything practical in such a dreamy, poetic nature as hers.
"Oh, Ernest!" she exclaimed, "you cannot be in earnest. She is not adapted to the responsibility of such a position, and I don't believe she would accept it if offered to her, being entirely unaccustomed to anything of the sort. She may have capacity enough, but it must be developed in the right way to be available. A person must do something besides theorize. She is amiable, affectionate, and would make a model wife for somebody."
"It seems, then, I made a serious mistake when I was married. I began to think so the month previous, when you were so much more ready to attend to everybody else than to me, and doubted seriously if my turn would ever come at all, and whether such a business-like wife was just the one to love me."
"Oh, now, you needn't put on such a doleful air, when I know you were congratulating yourself all the time upon your good fortune in getting such a wife. Haven't I been devoted enough to you since, to make it all up?" said she, fondly stooping over his shoulder, where she had been standing, twining one of his shining locks, around her finger. "But
