1. At twenty-seven years of age a man whom I know met the finest young
woman he had ever seen. He wanted her and he got her. Five years have
passed.
2. At marriage the man found himself endowed with a godlike selfishness.
This he probably owed to the past struggle for existence. With this not
very estimable faculty he carried to his home a young woman endowed
with nearly the opposite faculties. She only acquired selfishness
through association with her companion. At the start, then, they were
both willin' oxen--one ox was willing to do all the pulling, and the
other ox was willing he should.
3. Now the man had also a high faculty called judgment. He continually
wondered why the woman did not despise him on account of his
selfishness. He soon discovered that it was because the woman lacked
sadly in judgment. The baby would lift up its voice in the night. That
baby must be attended to. The weather might be very cold. The man
despised that fact, but the woman, because it made her teeth ache and
her body cake and cramp, feared the cold. But the man also despised the
baby and all its appertainings--particularly the appertainings.
Therefore, the man debated within himself that he was very selfish, or
he would get up. Perhaps, being a "just" man, the way men go, he really
got up about once in a dozen times, but, candidly, he would probably
have seen that baby suffer ere he would have attended its wants any
oftener. The woman took it for granted that the man would not get up,
and yet she did not despise him. She did not have judgment enough to do
it.