I

rudimentary humanity in Mr. Dempster which made him dream of doing something to improve his wife’s mind. What did he ever do to improve his own? It is hard to understand how horses find themselves so comfortable in their stables that, be the day ever so fine, the country ever so lovely, the air ever so exhilarating, they are always rejoiced to get back into their dull twilight: it is harder to me to understand how Mr. Dempster could be so comfortable in his own mind that he never wanted to get out of it, even at the risk of being beside himself; but no doubt the dimness of its twilight had a good deal to do with his content. And then there is that in every human mind which no man’s neighbour, nay, no man himself, can understand. My neighbour may in his turn be regarding my mind as a gloomy place to live in, while I find it no undesirable residence⁠—though chiefly because of the number of windows it affords me for looking out of it. Still, if Dempster’s dingy office in the City was not altogether a sufficing type of the mind that used it, I consider it a very fairly good one.