see, my dear," he concluded calmly and coldly, "that you talk
nonsense, when you say I have no heart." That was my father's
disposition; to suspect that any one, or anything else could hope for
the privilege of making his heart beat, except this natural physical
contraction, were a vain and empty surmise indeed. And yet he had been
twice married; the question may suggest itself, had he ever loved? I
dare say he had analysed his amative propensity thoroughly, and knew
to what extent it existed within him, but when a man can reconcile
himself to the belief that on the "middle line of the skull, at the
back part of his head, there is a long projection, below which, and
between two similar protuberances, is his Organ of amativeness," or
that by which he learns "the lesson of life, the sad, sad lesson of
loving," methinks he is not outraged by a public opinion which casts
him down in disgust from the pedestal of respectable humanity, and
this option I will leave to the reader, even though the subject in
this instance be my own parent.

Whether his second wife, and the only Mrs. Hampden with whom we shall
have to deal, was disappointed in her expectations of her husband, or
not, is a something which I could only suspect, or at most, arrive at
from the indications of appearances, as I am entirely ignorant of what
the nature of such expectations may have been.

The domestic atmosphere of our home was apparently healthy, and
untroubled by foreign or unpleasant elements; our surroundings were
apparently comfortable, and the family apparently satisfied. What more
could be desired? Critics complain of the indiscreet writer, who
raises the thick impenetrable veil, which is supposed to screen a
domestic, political or social grievance from the common eye of all
three conditions. Even he who makes a little rend, with his own pen,