monkey, she doesn't understand it. To this cause may possibly be attributed some of the ructions which occasionally jar the harmonious estate of matrimony.
Coward Adam does very well in America. He sees his position there quite plainly. He knows that if he climbs his tree too often, hundreds of feminine hands will pull him down. So he resigns himself to the inevitable. He is not slow to repeat the customary whine—"The woman whom thou gavest me"—but he says it quietly to himself between whiles. Because he knows that she knows all his share in the mischief! So he digs and delves, and finds gold and silver and limitless oil wherewith to turn into millions of dollars for her pleasure; he packs pork, lays railway tracks, starts companies, organizes "combines"—and strains every nerve and sinew to "do" every other Adam save himself in his own particular line of business, so that "the woman" (or may we say the women?) "whom thou gavest" may be clothed in Paris model gowns, and wear jewels out-rivalling in size and lustre those of all the kings and queens that ever made their sad and stately progress through history. Indeed, Coward Adam, in the position he occupies as a free citizen of that mighty Republic over which the wild eagle screams exultingly, looks a little bit like a beaten animal. But he bears his beating well, and is quite pleasant about it. In regard to "the woman whom thou gavest me" he is nearer the imaginary code of "chivalry" than his European brother. If the original Adam had learned the ways of a modern American gentleman of good education and fine manners, one can quite imagine
