1831.] "My Wife!" 153 



express what I mean — with a good one. All my calamities arise from my 

 good-fortune ; my indescribable misery lies at the door of my unspeak-' 

 able happiness. I am like a man who having unfortunately drawn a 

 prize of ten thousand pounds, is immediately thrown by his creditors 

 into prison for twenty thousand ; or I resemble the unhappy winner of 

 the prize-ox lately raffled for, whose appetite reduced the envied posses- 

 sor of the beast to the verge of bankruptcy. I am ruined, I repeat, by 

 my good-fortune. Had " my wife" been less amiable, I had been less 

 afflicted ; but she is perfection — and I am undone. Oh ! ye, who love — 

 but have the incalculable advantage of not being beloved in return ; ye, 

 whose wives reward your devoted attentions with the most profound and 

 unmitigated hatred ; ye, who never knew what it was to be doated on to 

 a degree of inconvenience, which, as novels and newspapers remark, 

 " may be more easily conceived than described" — how little able are ye 

 to sympathise with me ! I am the very victim of " my wife's" idolatry, 

 the martyr to my own felicity. Her affection for me is of that micros- 

 copic kind that she is perpetually detecting some horrible omen in what 

 I had foolishly looked upon as a prospect of pleasure. She finds blots 

 upon my sun when I fancy it all brightness. She sees poison in 

 every thing that I happen, by any chance, to have a partiality for. She 

 is such a faithful guardian to my happiness, and takes such extraor- 

 dinary care of my comforts, that she never lets me have any for use. 

 Every disaster that has happened to me for these ten yeai-s may be 

 clearly ti-aced to her prccTiitions for avoiding it. Lest I should get into 

 any danger, or rather lest her affectionate spirit should miss the delight 

 of sharing it with me, she never trusts me out of her sight. There 

 she is always at my elbow, taking care, as she says, that I want for 

 nothing — 



a form of life and light. 



That seen became a part of sight! 



And rose where'er I turned mine eye " 



In fact, I can't turn it, upon the most trivial object, without under- 

 going a cross-examination as to my motive for looking at it. If my eye 

 happen to fall upon the window or be turned towards the sky, I am saluted 

 with — " What is the matter } Are you going out }" — if my glance wan- 

 ders round the room she remarks it, and says — " Can I get you any- 

 thing.?" or if it be fixed for a moment on the fire — " You are cold. 

 Shall I ring for some coals ?" — nay, if I glance, though ever so carelessly, 

 at the girl who brings them — the same question is ready ; — " What do 

 you want? any thing that / can get you.'"' Her tender regard for my 

 health takes place of every other feeling ; I have been a most pitiable 

 invalid for many years, — not that I feel ill — quite the contrary ; you 

 would think me remarkable strong and healthy j but "my wife" knows 

 better — she is aware that I am of a most delicate and sickly constitution, 

 and she accordingly abridges my beef-steak, and locks up my cigars, 

 with a firmness that amounts to something philosophic. She sees the 

 water come into my eyes — or my mouth — but without relenting. In 

 short, she is the most sensitive of women. She detects a fever in the 

 very opening of a door, and discovers a rheumatism in every keyhole. 

 She never uses an umbrella until she is sure it is thoroughly aired ; is 

 seized with an ague at the sight of the damp newspaper regularly every 

 morning; and once experienced inflammation, Avhich she atti'ibuted to her 

 Iiaving incautiously drank some water out of a tvet glass. 



