On foreign shores, from broken dreams, a guilty man shall start, as thy last sad, plaintive wail rings in his tortured ear, “Would I were dead!”
SAM SMITH’S SOLILOQUY.
By the beard of the Prophet! what a thing it is to be a bachelor! I wonder when this table was dusted last! I wonder how long since that mattress was turned, or that carpet swept, or what was the primeval colour of that ewer and wash-basin.
Christopher Columbus! how the frost curtains the windows; how dirge-like the wind moans; how like a great, white pall the snow covers the ground. Five times I’ve rung that bell for coal for this rickety old grate; but I might as well thump for admittance at the gate of Paradise.
And speaking of Paradise—Sam Smith, you must be married: you haven’t a button to your shirt, nor a shirt to your buttons either.
Wonder if women are such obstinate little monkeys to manage? Wonder if they must be bribed with a new bonnet every day to keep the peace? Wonder if you bring home a friend unexpectedly to dinner, if they always take to their bed with the sick headache? Wish there was any way of finding out but by experience. Well, Sam, you are a Napoleonic looking fellow: if you can’t manage a woman, who can?
How I shall pet the little clipper. I’ll marry a blue-eyed woman; they are the most affectionate. She must not be too tall: a man’s wife shouldn’t look down upon him. She must not know too much: the Furies take your pert, catamount-y, scribbling women, with a repartee always rolled up under their tongues. She mustn’t be over seventeen; but how to find that out, Sam, is the question: it is about as easy as to make an editor tell you the truth about his subscription list. She must be handsome—no, she mustn’t either. I should be as jealous as Blue Beard. All the corkscrew, pantalooned, perfumed popinjays would be ogling her. But then, again, there’s three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, and three times a day I must sit opposite that connubial face at the table. What’s to be done? Yes; she must be handsome; that is as certain as that Louis Napoleon has a Jewish horror of Ham.
Wonder if wives are expensive articles? Wonder if their “little hands were ever made to scratch out husbands’ eyes?” Wonder if Caudle lectures are “all in your eye,” or—occasionally in your ear? Wonder if babies invariably prefer the night-time to cry?
To marry or not to marry, Sam? Whether ’tis better to go buttonless, and to shiver; or marry, and be always in hot water?