I have traveled a little in my life, and have been entertained in various households. I have seen wives who deserve crowns of laurel, to compensate for the crown of thorns they have worn for years; but I have seen others, who had thorns about them indeed, but they themselves were not on the sharp end. Some of these stupid, ignorant women fancied they were doing everything possible to make home pleasant, and wondered at their failure. There they sat, prodding their husbands with hat-pins, and grieved over the poor wretches’ irritability.
I recall a conversation I once overheard. The husband arrived just at dinner time. The wife heard him come in, and called to him in a faint, dying voice, from the top of the stairway—
“George, is that you?”
The answer was spiritless.
“Yes.”
The wife came downstairs.
“Well, then, we can have dinner. I don’t know that it’s ready, though; Bridget has had a toothache all day, and she’s just good-for-nothing.”
All this in the same faded tone of voice.
The husband passed into the parlor, and began to read the paper.
The weary tongue of his feminine partner wagged on, in a dreary sort of way.