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

From The London Saturday Revtew.
number of good old-fashioued words,
those pictorial and uncompromising epithets
in which our forefathers delighted, have gone
out of date and in their stead we have polite
paraphrases which avoid nothing so much as
calling things by their right names. Thus we
have no shrews or scolds now; we have sensi-
tive temperaments and nervous organizations,
we have irritable natures and difficult tenn
pers, but of shrews or scolds we have as little
as of the ducking-stool which was their pun
ishment. And yet the class survives, though
its name and award have both passed away,
and though the form is considerably modi-
fed; for the Victorian shrew is very unlike
her older Elizabethan sister, happily for those
of us who have to dwell within her
sphere. Such young person as 'Kathe-
rine the curst" could not exist for q
moment in any decent drawing-room;
and what even the noblest and purest of
Shakespeares women were permitted to say
without the loss of dignity or consideration
would subject any modern tradesman's wife
to unconditional condemnation, and charac-
ter torn into such rags as could never be re-
paired. But for all its softer manifestation
humanity is not yet purged of it's evil humor
of shrewisbness-that evil humor which has
existed as long as humanity itself. History
is full of stories of shrews, of whom of course
the archetype is Xantippe. But it seems to
have been the lot of many great
men beside Socrates to have had
the same ill-luck in their matrimonial
ventures. and to have drawn vixen when
. they put in for wife. Albert Durer drew
such q questionable prize; Milton another;
Palissy was belabored with his wifes not un-
natural reproaches when one by one her
household goods were taken to feed that
ravenous furnace of his, and the children
cried for the bread which was sacrificed in
the search after white enamel Perhaps it is
part Of the moral training of certain kind of
hero that he should have shrewish wife, on
the principle of the grace which comes by
tribulation, and the nobleness to be got at
only under the pressure of daily chastisement.
Anyway, great men have often married them
, selves to shire wish wives, and curst tempers
have been mated with patient ones more fire.
quently than happily.
4 A shrew is by no means virago. She may
be vixen, but she is seldom ferocious. Her
pleasure is to scold, not to strike, and she is
more likely to excite fray than to join in it
when it has developed into fight. Such as
4 the old masters painted her as in their day of
1 the highest classes, she is found now only
among the people, where indeed she is not
infrequent-that shrill-voiced, ferret-eyed,
sharp-nosed little woman we all know Of,
standing with her arms akimbo, ready to take
fire at the faintest spark, and scolding at all
town has such a woman-the dread of the
children and meeker kind of young folks in
her district, the sport of rude boys who like
to 'tset her Off from safe distance, and
the scoff of beery men who chaff her husband
. in their heavy way about the grey mare at
home; but with all that she keeps a tidy
1 hearth, saves money, and has as good name
! for honesty as for industry. She brings up
her family after the strictest pattern of mora
iy,fN oh, Ii
| go by thumpings and ratings that never end,
and she would disown any of them who by
chance lapsed into public transgresson; yet
she drives her husband to the ale-house as
Rip Van Wrinkles wife drove hers by tine
force of her tongue alone, driving
her sons after him, while her daugh-
ters take to showy dresses and illicit
love-maling, as their form of dram-drinking,
to help them over the hard lines laid down for
them by their shrewish mother. SO that, in
spite of herself and all her cares, the family
+ of the village scold more often than moi
! turns out badly, simply because of her un
governable temper. Every community has
one such member, q busy, bustling, notable
N little woman who halves her life between
4 toiling and railing, working hard to keep hel
4 family respectable, but succeeding for the
most part only in making them miserable
\ and who, when she dies, dies in chorus o.
commendation, unloved and unregretted by
\ all.
But beyond this primitive type of the
D shrew, we have enough and to spare of mor'
refined kind among the educated; goot
women who do not fiirt, nor spend too mucl
money on dress or pleasure who are eonten
to stay at home and look after their houses
and children, but who take out in ill-tempe
what they deny to naughtiness, and thinl
themselves justified because their sins are no
those of the lust of the flesh or the pride o
life. The house over which shrew preside
is a weariness to the souls of those forced t.
dwell therein. She is forever scolding tn
servants when she is not changing them; an
servants never do well when they are scolded
J Either it makes them more stupid than the
were before, or it rouses their bad passions, an
turns an unintentional mistake into wilfU
\ misdeed. But the shrew cannot be taugt
this; nor can she make allowance for huma
Snfirmities. With her those uneducated maid
n and men who do her service must be free fror
all traces of original sin, and from all the COZ
sequences of ignorance. They must be abl
too to bear unjust rebuke without so much 6
\ looking remonstrance, and if they ventul
to express one it is sure to end in an angr
warning ''this day month" The same kin
of thing goes on with her children. There
no good-natured slipping over faults, 4
smoothing away of difficulties, no making IL
best of the bad, and so escaping the fu
flavor of evils which are bad enough
the best; she worries and drives ar
scolds them through the whole
the day, then wonders that the
shrink from her, and that their very fear il
duces falsehood AS for her husband, she
II of ESQ much use bV her perpetual na0Oiu