"What do you accuse me of?" asked the doctor, with surprise.
"I accuse you—of—killing me—ee," responded the wife, doing her best to imitate a death-struggle.
"Ladies," answered the doctor, with admirable nonchalance, bowing to Mrs. Cadogan's bosom associates, "it is perfectly false. You are quite welcome to open her at once, and then you'll discover the calumny."
John Hunter administered a scarcely less startling reproof to his wife, who, though devoted in her attachment to him, and in every respect a lady worthy of esteem, caused her husband at times no little vexation by her fondness for society. She was in the habit of giving enormous routs, at which authors and artists, of all shades of merit and demerit, used to assemble to render homage to her literary powers, which were very far from common-place. A lasting popularity has attested the excellence of her song:—
"My mother bids me bind my hair
With bands of rosy hue;
Tie up my sleeves with ribbons rare,
And lace my boddice blue.
"'For why,' she cries, 'sit still and weep,
While others dance and play?'
Alas! I scarce can go or creep,
While Lubin is away.
"'Tis sad to think the days are gone,
When those we love are near;
I sit upon this mossy stone,
And sigh when none can hear.
"And while I spin my flaxen thread,
And sing my simple lay,
The village seems asleep or dead,
Now Lubin is away."
John Hunter had no sympathy with his wife's poetical aspirations, still less with the society which those aspirations led her to cultivate. Grudging the time which the labours of practice prevented him from devoting to the pursuits of his museum and laboratory he could not restrain his too irritable temper when Mrs. Hunter's frivolous amusements deprived him of the quiet requisite for study. Even the fee of a patient who called him from his dissecting instruments could not reconcile him to the interruption. "I must go," he would say reluctantly to his friend Lynn, when the living summoned him from his investigations among the dead, "and earn this d——d guinea, or I shall be sure to want it to-morrow." Imagine the wrath of such a man, finding, on his return from a long day's work, his house full of musical professors, connoisseurs, and fashionable idlers—in fact, all the confusion and hubbub and heat of a grand party, which his lady had forgotten to inform him was that evening to come off! Walking straight into the middle of the principal reception-room, he faced round and surveyed his unwelcome guests, who were not a little surprised to see him—dusty, toilworn, and grim—so unlike what "the man of the house" ought to be on such an occasion.
"I knew nothing," was his brief address to the astounded crowd—"I knew nothing of this kick-up, and I ought to have been informed of it beforehand; but, as I have now returned home to study, I hope the present company will retire."