183J.] i 151 ] 



" MY WIFE !" — A WHISPER ! 



" My Wife" — she is gone out of town, and I seize the lucky moineiit 

 to paint her portrait, and to tell my story. They shall not be full-lengths. 



Wives ! — what a word. There is " the creaking of shoes and the 

 rustling of silks" in the sound; the rattling of keys, and — no, not the 

 chink of money ; but there is the sly, subtle, single knock of a dun in 

 it, the scolding of servants, and the squeaking of children. Wife! — it 

 sounds like the requiem of liberty, the knell of genius, the sad, sullen 

 adieu to all the rhapsodies and ramblings of youth — the ipse dixit of 

 destiny, pronouncing sentence of imprisonment for life, upon the unfet- 

 tered and untameable spirit. It is a dictionary of itself — it means every 

 thing, good and evil. It is the open, sesame ! of mischief — the sound of 

 the creaking hinges of Pandora's box — the riveting of chains — the caba- 

 listic word that is to call spirits from the deep, seraphs or satyrs, as it 

 may happen — the flapping of the sails of the departing vessel, that is 

 leaving us on an island, peopled probably with hyenas that hate laugh- 

 ing, and bears too sulky to dance. But then, on the other hand, there is 

 a certain sweetness — not a sweetness exactly, but a something or other, 



in the sound, that certainly does but all this is not what I was going 



to sa)\ 



Wives in general — for I have a word for those of other people before 

 I come to my own — are as varied as the weather. There are hot and 

 cold ones, fair and foggy, damp and dry. Your " damp " wife will be 

 barely civil to you when you ask for her husband, and Avill perhaps say 

 something about " people calling to take him out." If you open the 

 door suddenly, you will perhaps see her putting the decanters away. 

 The " dry" wife works by hints ; she will quiz you, if single, upon your 

 dissipated habits, and intimate that she considers you the cause of all 

 her husband's wickedness before marriage, and some of it since. But 

 your " foggy" wife is more disagreeable than all — one with whom it is 

 impossible to see an inch before you, where you don't know whether you 

 are to go or stay, who seems to entertain you with entire indifference, or 

 regards you as a part of the live-stock upon her husband's estate ; who 

 neither invites you nor declines your visits, forgets your name twice a 

 week, and if asked who you are says — " Oh ! it is only a friend of Mr. 

 M.'s;" who, in short, just endures you, because there was a sort of un- 

 derstanding in the marriage conti-act, that the husband was to have his 

 friends and dogs as often as he pleased. This is a sad clog to friendship, 

 but it is a common one. I have a dozen friends whom I never think of 

 visiting for this reason, because I know I should be placing myself in 

 the situation of that person who apologized to Dr. Johnson for his long 

 stay, and was answered, " Not at all. Sir ; I had forgotten you were 

 present." 



When a man makes you stay to dinner whether you will or no, you 

 may understand what he means ; and when, on the other hand, he kicks 

 Tou down stairs, you may, in general, pretty accurately guess what his 

 mtentions are. But an indifferent or an indefinite sort of reception is 

 what I never, under any circumstances, run the risk of encountering 

 twice. 



How provoking is it, when you have made a call upon a friend who 

 is delighted to see you, and with whom you have made up your mind to 

 stop the evening, to be mercilessly interrupted by his wife, with — " well, 

 when will you come and take a cup of tea with us ? " as if she had de- 



