the man who is so fortunate as to win her love. Her soft black eyes, and neat, glossy, raven-coloured tresses; how far superior to the blonde's pallid blue, and sickly hair, which she calls flaxen ! It is long since I have kept a journal. I remember the last words that I wrote in the shape of a diary were penned the day, or rather night, before my luckless wedding. Times and feelings have changed since then. I really was very fond of Laura; but then I was so young, only just twenty-three, and I had not seen her temper in all its captivating perversity. No, she had had sense and tact enough to hide her bad qualities from the lover, -from the man that she and her old intriguing mother wished and determined to catch. Would that she had delicacy enough to strive to hide them from the husband! But this is of no consequence; this unceasing annoyance of him. She has him safe; she has attained her object, and become a married woman, and is no longer in danger of the dreaded old maidenism: she has a purse, which she does not fill, nor care for the means by which it is filled; and this she opens when she pleases: she may spend money earned with toil, and care, and thought, and anxiety, on the veriest trifles of her woman's vanity: she may study every little art of tormenting; and she still feels secure. The unhappy wretch to whom she has thus fastened herself must bear with all he must still toil and toil to get gold for her extravagance: he must still endure the annoyance from which he cannot escape. Oh, would that wives practised but half of those alluring arts which they are so prodigal of as maids! Would that they would but remember one of those forgiving, gentle, indulgent ways, which, before the fatal ceremony, clothed them in a robe of angelic grace! It is not good-this fearful change from every sweet endeavour to please, to every coarse, cold contempt, and every independent insolence. It ought to render matrimony invalid when the discovery is made that a falsehood has been wedded. And what falsehood is so black, what deception so unpardonable, as that of which maidens make such murderous use, when they paint their vices with the colours of heavenly virtue, and ensnare men with cheating charms less true than the enchantments of Armida? Let wives be what they were as virgins, and there would not be so many unhappy marriages in the world, nor so many bad husbands. Women make men what they are. I had written thus far, and really I had almost philosophized myself into forgetfulness of my own peculiarly miserable condition, when my wife, who never lets me alone if she knows that I am employed, and therefore contented, came into my study with a handful of bills in her hand. I received her mildly, though she presumed to enter without knocking, and also dared show me such a flagrant instance of disobedience by coming into my presence dressed in her untidy morning wrapper. Why will she wear it? She knows very well that I detest the fashion generally; and that individual wrapper particularly. She reminds me that I liked it before she was married, and the conversation usually ends in her flying into a rage, taking to sulking and tears. But to-day I was very mild; and I meant my manners to express only a severe dignity, and grave, majestic reproach. She ought to have felt the deepest gratitude for my forbearance, instead of which she exclaimed, "What are you looking cross for, Ned?" Now, if there is one thing more than another which makes the blood of a gentleman boil with indignation, it is the familiarity of nick-names. I have told my wife a hundred times that I will not be called Neddy, or Ned, and still she wilfully persists. Of course, I was far too much disgusted to reply, so I turned my back, and commenced writing to my old friend, "Merry Martin," as he used to be called in " our set." This was very proper behaviour. I avoided any unpleasant altercation, and kept up my dignity at the same time. "What rudeness!" she cried, petulantly flinging down the bills on my desk. "How can you be so surly, Ned?" Madam," I said gravely, "I command you to leave my room." "I am not a child, sir," she answered in a loud voice; “and I won't be commanded by you or any person." "Then you will lay me under the disagreeable necessity of turning you out," said I, with the greatest coolness imaginable; the provoking creature wanted to put me in a passion, and I was determined, for spite, to keep my temper. "If you dare to lay a finger on me, I will leave you and the children, and never enter your house again!" said my wife, turning very red. "I am glad to hear it," returned I, still quite cool. "You brute!" she exclaimed, sobbing with rage. "Oh, what a fool I was ever to marry you. I only wish that I had taken cousin Tom instead: he would never have treated me so." "I wish you had, madam, married any one rather than me! I wish you had. You might have married the devil himself, and he would have been the only suitable match for your infernal temper. I wish you had taken in cousin Tom, rather than have doomed me to this life of purgatory. I look upon you, madam, as the incorporate scourge for all my sins. With you, as my wife, Heaven would have no joy; and to be rid of you, I should find pleasures even in dare "This is too much!" interrupted Laura, suddenly drying her tears. "Do you think me a fool or a stone, sir, that you talk to me in this way?" "Yes, my dear, I know you to be a fool, and I wish you were a stone," I answered. "My dear!" she sneered. "Very dear, indeed!” 66 Very dear," I returned, "for you have cost me all my happiness; and that is too large a price to pay." I knew this would touch her. "And one's home, liberty, friends, and prospects are too much to sacrifice for a brute of a husband, who is mad with vanity and selfishness; whose heart, sensitive for himself, is hard as rock for any other. And this you are, sir! You spend pounds upon pounds on your own selfish indulgences, while you grudge your wife and children the very necessaries of their station! You aim at grandeur, without possessing one requisite even for a gentleman. You are a tyrant at home, amongst women and children; but oh! the merriest boon companion among your sottish friends. You would starve your household to appear magnificent with strangers. I hate you. All my love has gone, and I now see your character in its true light. You are a mean, cruel, despicable man, and I wish that I had died at the altar." As soon as she had finished she began to cry, as all women do. But my blood was fairly up, and I am a very passionate man when I do once begin. I could not stand all this; so, without further ceremony, I caught hold of her arm, and inflicted two unmistakable boxes on her own two ears. This was the first time that I had struck my wife. She deserved it, though. I'm sure any other man would have done the same, and more. She did deserve it. And yet I am sorry that I did it; for, instead of becoming, as I expected, furiously enraged, she stopped crying, and looking very hard at me, merely said, "Edward, do you strike a helpless woman?" I felt very funny; I almost wished that I had not done it. And yet a little wholesome correction would do her good. But she looked so like the Laura I so madly loved, that I felt my heart" turn," as they call it. She left the room, and I saw no more of her. At dinner she was sulky, and sent down my eldest girl to say that she could not come. She had a headache, little Nanny said; " and mamma is crying very hard," she added. Now this is all temper, every bit of it. It is absurd to think that I hurt her. I only just touched her. Good heavens! are women such tender, fragile things that a man's hand crushes them? Stuff and nonsense. Why did she provoke me, then? Does she think that I am an angel, and so presumes upon a more than mortal patience? It served her right, and I won't go to her and kiss and make up. It is a woman's place to be obedient; and even if her lord and master has stretched his prerogative too far, she ought to be the first to offer the hand of reconciliation. She is only sulking now, and I am determined to break her of this vile temper; so I won't go to her, and I don't know that I will speak to her when she does come to her senses. I will teach her what is the authority of a husband. I went to the play that night. What a sweetly pretty girl I sat by! she was all smiles and good humour; and when I offered her my opera-glass, she accepted it, and thanked me with such a captivating glance and smile, I was quite fascinated, and looked more at her than I did at the stage. Even Farren was forgotten, and Julia Bennet unthought of. I should like to know where she lives. She looked back so archly as she tripped along; and she pretended to adjust that wicked little crimson cap, when she was only looking with all the witchery that she knew so well to use. My home seemed cold, and blank, and desolate when I returned. No fire, one solitary candle, furniture shabby, wife sulky, children in all directions, lying about like so many white mice; I, the hapless father, and husband, and householder, devoutly wishing them all-we won't say where, for politeness' sake,--and myself once more the gay, the careless, free bachelor. And thus passes my married life. Alas! for all the gay hopes which my vagrant fancy painted, and my credulous enthusiasm enshrined as realities. Oh! how sadly different is hope from fulfilment-fiction from fact! And nowhere is this so bitterly shown as in the courtship and matrimony of two young people. Bright flowers enframe the one, thorns the other; one is decked in smiles, happy laughter, becoming garments, love-looks, ca resses, good-humour, and beauty; the other appears livid, old, wrinkled, and soured with disappointment and vexation. The carelessness of the attire bespeaks the indifference to please; the cold looks and angry gestures wail the dirge of love. Beneath the black grave of mutual heart-burnings, affection lies buried. Poverty, too, comes in to lend her moan to the heart's sad cry, and, when too late, they wake, the husband and the wife, to the desolation of their reality! And Laura may remain sulky, if she likes it. This morning she would hardly vouchsafe me an answer at breakfast. She declared her intention of returning home to her father. She may go. I asked her what she would do with the children? "Leave them," she answered, and looked as if she intended to cry. "The baby?" I asked; "do you expect me to nurse him, madam ?" "Let him die," she sobbed: and as soon as she let loose those torrents of tears which women have at command, of course all the children joined in the concert, and there was a tremendous noise, and fuss, and wailing, and lamentation. In the Aug., 1846.-vCL. XLVI.—NO. CLXXXIV. 2 M midst of it I walked out of the room, saying, "When it is all over you may call me again." This quarrel was made up, as all the other quarrels had been before. A good deal of sobbing, a little bit of passion, a few kisses, and then some more tears, and matters returned to their usual course. But these quarrels always leave a certain bitterness of feeling, and to her dying day Laura will never forgive those two chastising "boxes" which she received from my hands. Oh! wooing and wedding are truly the two opposite points of the compass of love. It is very sad how often the most tender courtship ends in the most hating marriage; the most fond lover becomes transformed into the wildest and most disagreeable spouse. It is an odd fact in domestic philosophy, but not the less a true one. And it is of no use giving advice. Young people are foolish and headstrong, and won't take any teaching but that of experience; and yet, if they would hear me, I could whisper just one little word or two. Here they are: Young men and maidens, don't be caught by the outside, but look below the surface; and choose your article for wear, and not for show. The plainest colours are the fastest; and a good, durable thing, says the housewife, looks well to the last. Doves kissing over a ring may, in time, be changed into a chain and wasp, and the orange-flower often turns to a stinging-nettle-the true bud of matrimony. SONNET. BY C.E.N. HARK! the reapers blithely singing, Guileless mirth in their bright eyes shining- Tillume their final Harvest Home. |