"
"Impossible!" exclaimed Smith, "we can't go that, Doctor. I can't
stand my quarter of that."
"Foolish man!" continued the Doctor; "I say I was alone; let me
demonstrate my proposition. Blackstone says, and what he says every
lawyer will concede is the end of the law, and the beginning too, for
that matter, that when a woman becomes a wife, she loses her identity,
becomes nobody; that her husband absorbs her existence, as it were, as
he does her goods and chattels, in his own. Now, sir, do you
comprehend? My wife was with me, and she, being according to law
nobody, of course I was alone. You, sir, being a law abiding man, must
admit that my proposition is Q.E.D.
"The doctrine of absorption, as I call it, is convenient. It promotes
harmony of action, by subjecting it to the control of a single will,
thus avoiding all embarrassment from a conflict of opinion between man
and wife. So, on my way to the trout stream (I say _my_ way, for
though my wife was on horseback by my side, yet she being, according
to the best legal authorities, nobody, you see I was alone), I thought
I would enlighten the good lady in regard to the true position, or
rather the no position at all, which she occupied. Our way lay for a
couple of miles along an old road, towards a clearing which had been
abandoned, and through which the stream flowed.
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