FTER the execution of the eighteen malefactors [in 1787], a female was bawling an account of them, but called them nineteen. A gentleman said to her, "Why do you say nineteen? There were but eighteen hanged." She replied, "Sir, I did not know you had been reprieved."
Horace Walpole, Correspondence.
ON THE MARRIAGE OF JOB WALL AND MARY BEST.
OB, wanting a partner, thought he'd be blest,
If, of all womankind, he selected the Best;
For, said he, of all evils that compass the globe,
A bad wife would most try the patience of Job.
The Best, then, he chose, and made bone of his bone,
Though 'twas clear to his friends she'd be Best left alone;
For, though Best of her sex, she's the weakest of all,
If it's true that the weakest must go to the Wall.
Hicks, apud J. C. Young.
A vertu des femmes est peut-être une question du tempérament.
Balzac, Physiologie du Mariage.