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WIVES OF GREAT MEN
It is an oft-quoted saying of Dr. Johnson that “a man in general is better pleased when he has a good dinner on the table than when his wife talks Greek.” Racine had an illiterate wife and was accustomed to boastfully declare that she could not read any of his tragedies. Dufresny married his washerwoman. Goethe’s wife was a woman of mediocre capacity. Heine said of the woman he loved, “She has never read a line of my writings and does not even know what a poet is.” Therese Lavasseur, the last flame of Rousseau, could not tell the time of day. “How many of the wise and learned,” says Thackeray, “have married their cooks! Did not Lord Eldon, himself the most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant-maids?” Seven hundred people sat up all night to see the beautiful Duchess of Hamilton get in her carriage, but would one in a thousand lose a wink of sleep to get a glimpse of the learned wife of the pundit Yainavalka, who discoursed with the Indian in Sanskrit on the vexed problems of life?—The Interior.
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Woman Suffrage—See [Retort, a].
WOMANLY WIT
Foster, the State news paragrapher of the Cleveland Press, published a paragraph to this effect: “A Marion girl started her graduating essay as follows: ‘I am fairly worried out with the incessant pratings of the lords of creation on the duties and sphere of woman.’” The paragraph closed with the somewhat dangerous assertion that the editor would bet a new spring hat that the author of that discourse on woman’s sphere could not bake a loaf of bread. Two days later Mr. Foster received from Marion a large box. It contained sundry light loaves of bread and cake marvelously toothsome. An accompanying affidavit bore the solemn oath of the sweet girl graduate (who possesses the pretty name of May Williams) that she had, unaided, made the wheat-bread marked “Exhibit A,” the two specimens of cornbread marked “Exhibit B,” and the chocolate, “Exhibit C.” The notary’s seal of office was affixt to the affidavit, and it was settled beyond a doubt in Mr. Foster’s mind that his wager had been accepted. He therefore went out and lavished his week’s salary on a new spring hat.
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WOMAN’S SPHERE
She’s a woman with a mission; ’tis her heaven-born ambition to reform the world’s condition, you will please to understand. She’s a model of propriety, a leader in society, and has a great variety of remedies at hand. Each a sovereign specific, with a title scientific, for the cure of things morbific that vex the people sore; For the swift alleviation of the evils of the nation is her foreordained vocation on this sublunary shore. And while thus she’s up and coming, always hurrying and humming, and occasionally slumming, this reformer of renown, Her neglected little Dicky, ragged, dirty, tough, and tricky, with his fingers soiled and sticky, is the terror of the town. (Text.)—Tit-Bits.