The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-02-24

happy by little less rigid morality rather
than unhappy by extra virtue, we can scarcely
blame the children of the shrew for not
divining what they do not see, and for doing
their best to escape from what they suffer.
But many O shrew has broken her heart before
now for what seems to be the ingratitude and
coldness of those whom her own temper only
drove from her.
Shrews are generally inclined to meanness
of habit and stinginess of dealings neither
are they women of luxurious temperament
woman may be violent, passionate, jealous,
and unreasonable, with blood boiling at all
points, as ardent in anger as in love, and
fierce in all her pass ions, but she is not
shrew. The shrew proper is thin-lipped,
unsensuous woman, unmerciful to 'hussies,"
and intoerant of self-indulgence. There is
something in the very fact of being at loose
ends in morality that seems to soften peoples
tempers, save indeed when the whole nature
is coarsely wrong and violent altogether;
while o woman who is absolutely impec-
cable on the score of discretion often gives
herself no trouble on that of amia-
bility. She seems to think that nothing
else is needed if only Mrs. Grundy is salts
fed, and that to be good and disagreeable is
not the high treason against virtue which the
old saying makes it out to be- Perhaps,
however, it is too much to expect poor hu-
manity to be square on all four sides, and
right in every corner. Men rarely scold as
women scold. A few do so, certainly, all
types running into each other; but men are
kept IN order by the fact of physical strength,
as well as by certain instructive
respect for each other which women
have not got. Men could not be
brought to suffer from one another what
women bear from women; hence scolding
man generally takes his wife and daughters
for his vaSqnlq Of wrath THAR ran6arinO ~
them incapable of Furnishing him, save by
retaliation in kind, when they generally come
the worst off. For in scolding match, as
everywhere else, the heavier metal must tell,
and when men are shrews at all they surpass
even the shrewishness of women.
But though we can afford to laugh at it
from a safe distance, the fault of shrewish-
ness is indeed great one. Olden times ap-
preciated it at rather O high figure. The
cucking-stool wherein the scold was bound
before her own door to be peted and in
suited by the mob, and the ducking- stool
in which she was ducked and half lf-drowned,
were rough modes of showing dislike
to an unpleasant habit. Certainly we do not
wish to see them revived and, indeed, we
rarely meet nowadays with the same kind or
amount of shrewishness that was once so
| general in all classes, and punished so
severely among the poor Manners have so
of the lady class, however shrewish she may
be, has to refrain from abusive epithets under
pain of class degradation, and must confne
herself to the expression of her displeasure
| without the aid of full-havored adiectives.
| Yet, though the form may be so much
| softened, the vice is not eradicated;
and what we want to make clear is, that
scolding is q vice like that of any other, diff
| cult to shake off when once adopted, and one
that eats into the moral nature more deeply
| than people are aware Of. And the odd part
of the business is that most shrews are un.
conscious of deserving blame. The woman
who rails and fumes at every trifing annoy.
ance that occurs till she makes the whole
house miserable, does not know that she is
committing a sin. She only thinks herself
wronged by circumstances or by people, and
that she is exercising righteous indignation,
and making quite justifable protest
| against the same. She does not dream that
she is digging the grave of her own happiness
| and esteem; but, after she has worried
her family to the very verge of madness
| laments her hard case in not being loved
she who would do so much for them! So she
would in all probability; for nine times ou
of ten it is her temper, not her heart, that il
in fault, and we frequently find the most un
comfortable shrew capable of the most heroic
virtue when the pinch comes. Yet as pinche
are only occasional and the ordinary monoto
nous highway the place we mostly walk in
the shrews heroic virtues are brought int
play but rarely, while her shrewshness is
thing of every day, and her power-anC
habit-of making people unhappy one tina
has no ending save in death.