O Mrs. Housekeeper:
all the other keys hast thou: but that key thou hast not!
Have we not all such closets, my jolly friend, as well as the noble
Marquis of Carabas? At night, when all the house is asleep but you, don't
you get up and peep into yours? When you in your turn are slumbering, up
gets Mrs. Brown from your side, steals downstairs like Amina to her
ghoul, clicks open the secret door, and looks into her dark depository.
Did she tell you of that little affair with Smith long before she knew
you? Psha! who knows any one save himself alone? Who, in showing his
house to the closest and dearest, doesn't keep back the key of a closet
or two? I think of a lovely reader laying down the page and looking over
at her unconscious husband, asleep, perhaps, after dinner. Yes, madam, a
closet he hath: and you, who pry into everything, shall never have the
key of it. I think of some honest Othello pausing over this very sentence
in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing at Desdemona opposite to
him, innocently administering sandwiches to their little boy--I am trying
to turn off the sentence with a joke, you see--I feel it is growing too
dreadful, too serious.
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