KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



127 



of an easy fortune. Poor fellow ! I did not 

 know that his wife was a precision — I do 

 not employ the term in a religious sense. 



The first hint I received of the fact was 

 from Mr. S., who removing my hat from the 

 first peg in the hall to the fourth, observed, 

 " My wife is a little particular in those 

 matters; the first peg is for my hat, the 

 second is for William's, the third for Tom's, 

 and you can reserve the fourth, if you please, 

 for your own ; ladies, you know, do not like 

 to have their arrangements interfered with." 

 I promised to do my best to recollect the 

 order of precedence with respect to the 

 hats, and walked up stairs, impressed with 

 an awful veneration for a lady who had con- 

 trived to impose so rigid a discipline on a 

 man formerly the most disorderly of 

 mortals, mentally resolving to obtain her 

 favor by the most studious observance of 

 her wishes. I might as well have determined 

 to be Emperor of China ! 



Before the week was at an end, I was a 

 lost man. I always reckon myself tolerably 

 tidy; never leaving more than half my 

 clothes on the floor of my dressing-room, 

 nor more than a dozen books about any 

 apartment I may happen to occupy for an 

 hour. I do not lose more than a dozen 

 handkerchiefs in a month ; nor have more 

 than a quarter of an hour's hunt for my hat 

 or gloves, whenever I am going out in a 

 hurry. I found all this was as dust in the 

 balance. I might as well have expected to 

 be admitted a contributor to Blackwood 

 because I could write "joining hand." 



The first time I sat down to dinner, I 

 made a horrible blunder ; for, in my haste 

 to help my friend to some asparagus, I 

 pulled the dish a little out of its place, 

 thereby deranging the exact hexagonal order 

 in which the said dishes were arranged. I 



discovered my mishap on hearing Mr. 



sharply rebuked for a similar offence ; se- 

 condly, I sat half the evening with the cushion 

 a full finger's -breadth beyond the cane- work 

 of my chair — and what is worse, I do not 

 know that I should have been aware of my 

 delinquency, if the agony of the lady's feel- 

 ings had not, at length, overpowered every 

 other consideration, and at last burst forth 



with, " Excuse me, Mr. * , but do pray 



put your cushion straight ; it annoys me 

 beyond measure to see it otherwise." 



My third offence was, displacing the 

 snuffer-stand from its central position be- 

 tween the candlesticks ; my fourth, leaving 

 a pamphlet I had been perusing on the piano- 

 forte, its proper place being a table in the 

 middle of the room, on which all books in 

 present use were ordered to repose ; my 

 fifth, — but in short I should never have 

 done, were I to enumerate every separate 

 enormity of which I was guilty. 



Mv friend 



-'s drawing-room had as 



good a right to exhibit a placard of " Steel 

 Traps and Spring Guns," as any park I am 

 acquainted with. In one place you were in 

 danger of having your legs snapt off, and in 

 another your nose. There never was a 

 house so atrociously neat ; every chair and 

 table knew its duty; the very chimney 

 ornaments have been " trained up in the 

 way they should go," and woe to the un- 

 lucky wight who should make them " depart 

 from it !" Even those " charitable liber- 

 tines," the children and dogs, were taught 

 to be as demure and hypocritical as the ma- 

 tronly tabby-cat herself; who sat with her 

 fore feet together, and her tail curled round 

 her as exactly as if she had been worked in 

 an urn-rug, instead of being a living mouser. 

 It was the utmost stretch of my friend's 

 marital authority to get his favorite spaniel 

 admitted to the honors of the parlor : and 

 even this privilege is only granted in his 

 master's presence. If Carlo happens to pop 

 his unlucky brown nose into the room when 



is from home, he sets off directly, 



with as much consciousness in his ear and 

 tail as if he had been convicted of a larceny 

 in the kitchen, and anticipated the applica- 

 tion of the broomstick. 



As to the children, Heaven help them ! 

 I believe that they look forward to their 

 evening visit to the drawing-room with much 

 the same sort of feeling. Not that Mrs. 



is an unkind mother, or, I should 



rather say, not that she means to be so ; but 

 she has taken it into her head, that 

 " preachee and floggee too" is the way to 

 bring up children ; and that as young people 

 have sometimes short memories, it is ne- 

 cessary to put them verbally in mind of 

 their duties, 



" From night till morn, from morn to dewy eve." 



So it is with her servants ; if one of them 

 leaves a broom or a duster out of its place 

 for a second, she hears of it for a month 

 afterwards. I wonder how they endure it ! 

 I have sometimes thought that from long 

 practice they do not heed it —as a friend of 

 mine, who lives in a bustling street in the 

 city, tells me he does not hear the horrible 

 noise of the coaches and carts in the front 

 of his house, nor of a confounded brazier, 

 who hammers away in his rear from morning 

 till night. The worst of it is, that while 



Mrs. never allows a moment's peace 



to husband, children, or servants, she thinks 

 herself a jewel of a wife; but such jewels 

 are too costly for every-day wear. 1 am sure 



poor thinks so in his heart, and 



would be content to exchange half-a-dozen 

 of his wife's tormenting good qualities, for 

 the sake of being allowed a little common- 

 place repose. 



