The recent suggestion in this country, and in England, to impose a tax upon bachelorhood, and which was promptly met by one of that cynical fraternity with the remark that he thought it entirely just, as every man ought to be taxed for his luxuries? recalls the fact that among the Romans, as we learn from Mommsen (i, 62), bachelors really were taxed. But notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding the appeals and denunciations of Cato and other purists of the times, celibacy, against which grave protestations were heard as early as the sixth century B. C, gradually increased among all classes, but particularly the patrician.

' We all have our troubles in married life, from Caudle lectures and empty rial-bins to the villainous practices, on the part of our wives, of putting their cold feet to our backs, and eating dry cake in bed; but we ought to bear them manfully, and generally do; knowing that the divorce remedy ia a good bit like amputating your foot to cure a corn.