"
"So it does. How to get them to listen. I tried to find out how Paul
achieved that first step; and when I looked he told me plainly enough.
By becoming all things to all men; by showing these people that he
understood them, and knew what was the matter with them. Now do you go
and do likewise by Vavasour, and then exercise your authority like a
practical man. If you have power to bind and loose, as you told us
last Sunday, bind that fellow's ungovernable temper, and loose him
from the real slavery which he is in to his miserable conceit and
self-indulgence! and then if he does not believe in your 'sacerdotal
power,' he is even a greater fool than I take him for."
"Honestly, I will try: God help me!" added Frank in a lower voice;
"but as for quarrels between man and wife, as I told you, no one
understands them less than I."
"Then marry a wife yourself and quarrel a little with her for
experiment, and then you'll know all about it."
Frank laughed in spite of himself.
"Thank you. No man is less likely to try that experiment than I."
"Hum!"
"I have quite enough as a bachelor to distract me from my work,
without adding to them those of a wife and family, and those little
home lessons in the frailty of human nature, in which you advise me to
copy Mr. Vavasour."
"And so," said Tom, "having to doctor human beings,
nineteen-twentieths of whom are married; and being aware that three
parts of the miseries of human life come either from wanting to be
married, or from married cares and troubles--you think that you will
improve your chance of doctoring your flock rightly by avoiding
carefully the least practical acquaintance with the chief cause of
their disease.
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