Year: 1876

The London Liberal Rerie,c thus dis


courses: Constant dropping wears away
a stone and a peevish wife will destroy
the temper of the best husband living.
1t is pity that number of good ladies
do not see this, the probability being
that if they did they and their mates
would enjoy greater happiness than
falls to their share. Probably more
misery results from fretful wives than
any other cause. 1t is comparatively
easy to get OIL comfortably with pas


sionate person, provided that one un


derstands that persons character; but
it is next to hopeless to look for peace
where one is tied to an individual of the
"nagging" order. There are times, no
doubt, when one is able TO make light
of her querulou>ness, and laugh at her
grumblings, but then there are others
when these jar with the most exquisite
discord upon the soul. The man who
is low spirited, who is perplexed and
worried by day In which business has
been trying and unsatisfactory, when
he reaches his home longing for solace
and sympathy, is not in position to
have a catalogue of grievances, for
which he is unjustly held to be directly
or indirectly responsible, poured into
his ear. The misfortune is, however,
that a fretful wife attacks her lord at
all seasons, and 80 at last compels him
to lower his standard ofimperturbability
and rival her in irritableness. When
she has succeeded in doing this the
chances are that she makes herself ad-
ditionally miserable upon the score Of
the sharp words to which he treats her.
No doubt she derives good deal of sat
isfaction from the reflection that she is
a poor, ill-used, long suffering martyr;
but this must be small comfort to the
remorseless tyrant who, one is some
times led to believe, spends his days in
regarding her with callOusness which
is positively brutal, but who is, in gen.
erai way, not so formidable a person as
he is made to appear. Probably, in
deed, this person, is disposed to resent
the self-importance with which she airs
her mar.yrdom, and exhibits his power
as despotic tyrant. At any rate, in
the majority of cases he can hardly fail
to see the irony of the situation, and to
reflect bitterly thereon. Despotic ty-
rant though he is reputed to be, he
knows very well that he has compare


lively little authority in his own house,
albeit that he is nominally the head
thereof. Bitter experience has taught
him that If he ventures to chide his
children he will probably be pulled up
sharply; while if he presumes to in
dulge them in any without having first
received the maternal sanction, he will
scarcely fail to be told that he is utterly
spelling them. II is pretty much the
same in reference to his servants. Yet,
with strange inconsistency, his better
half is continually urging him to do ter
rible things with both her children and
her servants, upon the plea that she can
do nothing with them, the former, es-
pecially, being past her control. Pre-
sumably she spends her life In shaving
upon his behalf. At any rate, If she
does not, her oft repeated and most ear
nest declarations are unreliable. Yet,
il he presumes to hint that her domes


tic management is not quite perfect
that his dinner, for instance, might be
more to his liking. and that his house
hold bills might advantageously be
lighter-she is up in arms at once, and
he learns that 1t IL useless to try to
please him, and that, though he is un-