The Portland daily press., 1874-09-01
Talk and Tears.

Floundering through recent batch Of the
Brooklyn business, and particularly perusing
the testimony of the young woman who
spoke to the household tantrums of the Re-
fined, we were struck in weak place by the
artless phrase of the witness-"And he talked,
and talked, and talked, and talked, and
talked" Afterward she added: "He locked
her up and scolded all night long-and she
was crying and cryingp Finally, said the
witness: "When she was not crying she was
praying''-but this is point too tenderly del
icate for us to dwell upon.
There has been a great deal too much YER
bosty in this case, but of all the interlocutors
the Refined has been the most persistently
voluble. When he was not punching some
body's head or writing ream upon ream of
Statements" he was talking. He seems to
have been perfect master of the art of
"naggiDg." What would have struck other
men dumb only opened the flood gates of his
wild rhetoric. His household gods (such as
they were) fell shivered upon the hearthstone.
His wife, folding her hands in prayer, covered
under the tempest of his gable. Strangers
came to his house to behold the ruin, and he
took them all into his confidence; and as the
agony became greater, and the atmosphere
more and more tetid with scandal, he talked
and he talked and he talked-and she was
crying and crying!
Many and various were his utterances-in-
fnitely dramatic his monologue of the break
fast-table, and of the dinner-table, and of the
supper-table, and of the parlor and the bed
chamber. Now bit of philosophy Anon,
a mCrsel of scriptural exegesisl Prose and
poetry jolted each other upon the stream of
his elocution! Cords upon cords of adjectives
were heaped up like the debris left by fresh
ct. And there was this little woman so YER
bally set upon by this large and elegant man
that it is wonder that she did not go mad.
And still he talked and talked and talked
and she was crying and crying.
The friends of his youth came to see him.
Some of them brought him advice, and some
of them money. The money he took, but
the advice, so far as it related to his holding
his tongue, he did not take. In lawyers
offices, in editorial rooms, in the street, on
cars and steamboats,, to people who were in-
terested, and to people who were bored, he
retaled and wholesaled his troubles. The
knocking down he confined exclusively to
the sacred home circle, but the verbal state
ments he generously bestowed upon all. 1t
was an everlasting course of free lectures,
through which he partially freed his mind.
And so he talked and talked-and she was
crying and crying!
There is just little chivalry left in this
world, and the ears of mankind, long as they
are, may sometimes be injuriously overbur-
dened. We never understand what a mon
strous, immense, terribly huge thing talk is,
until we come to see it in print. Still the
tender-hearted reader will understand what
must have been the sufferings of a woman
constantly lectured night and day, week after
week and month after month. The wo nder
is that she did not long ago do what she did
at last. Here is the farce Of Caudle turn ed
into a tragedy with the Refined in the role Of
the old lady. A pretty thing it was for him
| to complain of his hair growing gray; did
| he suppose that nobody had a head OF hair
except himself to be bleached by his talk and
his talk and his talk-whle she was crying
| and crying ?-Nep York Tribune.