I 



EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 89 



inconsequential and monotonously voluble. Mrs. Deane 

 was possessed by the cleaning demon : her door mat 

 was kept clean by a deputy mat ; in wet weather no 

 doubt deputy umbrellas were used to keep the 

 silk ones from getting wet. Mrs. Glegg, the ablest 

 of the sisters, was also the chief scold ; but while 

 the most censorious in speech, she was perhaps the least 

 ungenerous in behaviour. The whole family was poor 

 in intellectual gifts, but lack of ideas may occur in 

 many types of character. The most conspicuous feature 

 in all its members was the absence of deep feeling ; they 

 knew nothing of either love or hate ; their hearts were 

 little, however great their hoards. One of the chief items 

 in Mrs. Tul liver's happiness, in her happier days, was 

 the circumstance that she had some exceptionally suit- 

 able sheets in constant readiness for laying out her 

 husband's corpse whenever he might chance to die. 



The keynote of the Tulliver family was passion. It 

 was certainly inordinate. It dominated with sad effect 

 the lives of father and daughter. It was Mrs. Tulliver's 

 consolation and boast that there was nothing of the 

 Dodson in Maggie, whose brownness and straightness 

 and unmanageable hair (and unmanageable emotions) 

 were a constant offence to the Dodson eye. She was 

 in fact a true daughter of the man who had 

 brought the Dodson name and linen and plate to a 

 bankrupt's end. But the Tullivers also were by no 

 means alike. Tulliver himself was headstrong, obstin- 

 ate, brooding, implacable, violent. Two passions 

 absorbed almost all his nerve force his love for his 

 daughter and his hatred of Wakem. When sudden 

 ruin fell upon him his one craving was for the girl's 

 immediate recall from boarding school. When nearly 

 unconscious his eye never left the door until her arrival, a 



