The Wyandot pioneer. (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1853-1868, 1862-03-14
THE GOOD WIFE.
A NORWEGIAN STORY.
IFrom the Continental Magazine.l
PART I.
NOTHING LOST BY GOOD HuMoR.

For more than month | had been ran
sacking my memory in search of some
story or narrative to offer our readers,
but with rather poor success. / thought
of all the good things l had ever heard,
and tumbled and tossed my books in
vain-nothing could l find that was suit
able for either children or parents. So
was, very reluctantly, about to abandon
the enterprise, when it Glanced that, be-
ing unable to compose myself to sleep, a
few nights since, took up, according to
my custom on such occasions, an old copy
of Montaigne. the usual companion of my
vigils, the fellowoecupant of my pillow,
and the only moralist whose musings one
can read with pleasure on the wrong side
of forty.
opened the Essays carelessly, for each
and every page Of them is precious and
replete with themes for meditation. In
SO doing, l alighted upon the chapter en-
titled, OF three Good Women, which
commences thus: They are not to be
found by the dozen, as every one knows,
and especially not in the duties of mar
ried lille, for that is a market full of such
thorny circumstances that it is no easy
matter for woman's will to keep whole
and sound in it for any length of time
'Montaigne is an impertiaent fellow !?
I exclaimed, slamming to the book.
/. What? this close reader of antiquity,
this fine analyst of the human heart, has
been able to find only three good women,
only three devoted wives, in all the Greek
and Roman annals This is playing the
Joker out of season. Goodness is the
special attribute of woman. Every mar
|ried woman is good, or supposed to be
such. bethink me, too, that our old
jurists always make the law presume this
goodness to exist. at the outset
Thus meditating, I wandered into my
library, and there took up fine old vol
uIue, Oouuu Ill Ieu A1OIOCCo, dHO cItitlcu
The Dream of Vergier;; > book full of
wisdom and logic, and written by some
venerable clerk, during the reign of
Charles ", King of France. 1 looked
for the page that had struck my fancy,
but-alas how oddly ones memory
changes with the. lapse of years-instead
of finding, in that grave old book, the
just panegyric of woman's goodness, l
discovered to my great surprise, only a
violent satire, all spiced with texts bor-
rowed from St. Augustine, the Roman
laws and the ancient canons, with this
sage conclusion, full worthy of the exor-
dium -
I do not say, however, that there is
no good woman at all, but the species is
rare; and hence an old law says that nc
iaao concerning good wonaea should be made,
| for that laws are to be made concerning
things of usual occurrence, as it is written
in 4Auth sine prohi6., ETC., gaia zero and
/ L. Nam ad ca, Dig. DE Leg;6us.'
These juridical epigrams, these COO
pleasantries, in serious book, shocked
me more than even the hard hits of the
Gascon philosopher. Good women
thought to myself, ARE found every.
where In history? No; history i.
written by men who love and admire
heroes only, that is to say, those who rob
subjugate, or slay them. In theology
No: it has not yet forgiven the daughter!
of Eve the fault which ruined us-a sir
OF which they have retained at least {
little share. In the records of the law
then :? No, again for men make th,
laws. Woman is, in their eyes, nothing
but minor, legally incapable of govern
ing herself. God only knows what is
here, as in all things, the difference be
tween the fact and the law Are thes
good women to be found in plays, 70
mances, or novels No, still /; for the,
are but the perpetual recital Of feminin
. artfulness. Where, then, shall we loo
for good women? In the realm of fabl
and fiction, in the kingdom of fancy-th
dominion of the ideal
, These are the only regions in whic
: merit holds the place it is entitled to G
s Justice is done to the claims of virtu,
S What is the tenderness of Baucis, or til
: long fidelity of Penelope? Fiction onl,
e And the resignation of the gentle Grise
: dis-wlat is it? An old tale Of othe
e days. In order to find the good woma
d we are looking for, this is the ivory po
n tai at which we must knock.
: Acting upon this conviction, | rep
y rused all the old traditions, | called to n,
II aid that peculiar lore of nations which
: embodied in their legends, and which
e SO vividly, so amiably, and so ingenious
/ expressed. interrogated the story-telle
l. of every country, Indian, Persian, Ar
le bic. Turkish. Chinese, italian, Spanis