makes herself ostentatiously uncomfortable,
with a patience as ostentatious as her
self-martyrdom.

If you think ten o'clock too late for
breakfast, and growl at the delay and
discomfort ensuing from the postponement
of your "matins," asking why you cannot
have things earlier? the whole house is
alive and astir at five; and your wife gets
up (for a few mornings) at six; and thinks
she has done her duty by you, and obeyed
you. If you say that lying on a sofa reading
French novels is not your idea of a
good housekeeper, henceforth she plunges
into all kinds of menial employments, goes
about in a rusty old gown with a duster in
her hand; and when you want her to take
a walk, is sure to be in the kitchen, whence
she emerges with dabs of paste sticking to
her fingers, or she comes in with her
face flushed by "standing over the fire,"
when rather stately visitors call, and you
have especial reasons for wishing her to
look nice. But how can you complain of
her obedience? Has she not turned over
a new leaf, as you desired she should?
Granted; but you did not ask her to turn
over half a dozen at once, or to make so
much flutter in the process.

One great weapon of a woman in this
kind of secret warfare, this heaping up of
burning coals, is to pretend to be afraid of
her husband; and not only to carry to the
extreme any wish he may have expressed,
but to do it with a certain affectation of
fear, as if he were the ogre of whom she
was in mortal dread, though sweetly
resigned to her fate all the same: as if he
were a tyrant, whose goodwill she seeks
to propitiate by works of supererogation,
all the time she is quivering with fear
and anticipating the worst. The children
play a large part in this special manner
of coal heaping. You are reasonably fond
of them, but you do not think it necessary
to give up all the gravity of life, all the
importance of business, to their pleasures.
And you do not think it hurts them to
be snubbed if they are troublesome, and
put in their right place, the background,
if they are forward and in the way.
You come home harassed and disturbed.
Things are looking black in the City;
your difficult case, from which you had
hoped so much in the hospital yesterday,
threatens to prove a failure; you lost
your cause in court to-day by an oversight;
one of the thousand anxieties to which
professional men are subject has invaded your
peace of mind and ruffled your temper;
and you tell your wife irritably—we will
grant the irritability—that you wish she
"would keep the children quiet, and not
let them make such a confounded noise."

From that day forward you are their
ogre as well as hers, and your presence is
the signal for their penance.

"Hush! here's papa!" mamma says, in
a half-frightened kind of way, as soon as
you are within hearing. "Papa doesn't
like you to talk, dears, speak softly," in an
audible whisper from the other end of the
room, where they are all congregated
together, mamma and the little ones, with
half-scared looks turned askance at you,
seated in solitary majesty before the
blazing grate. After which presently
comes a faint sigh of pity for herself and
them, and an expressive shiver, followed
by a gentle, "Come away with me, my
loves, we will go into another room where
there is a fire, and then you can play
without disturbing papa."

You all this while, having got over
the pinch under which you were suffering
some weeks ago when you asked for
quiet, are perfectly indifferent to their
little voices, and indeed rather enjoy
listening to their prattle, and hearing their
odd remarks. But you once told your
wife to keep them quiet, and she takes her
revenge by translating your once into for
ever, and by making your momentary
irritation an enduring annoyance.

It is the same with your more carnal
tastes; and in this manner of taking
revenge wives and housekeepers are
naturally adepts, owing to their position and
power. There has been a run on boiled
beef, say, which you one day said you
liked. Since then boiled beef has become
like the "rabbits hot and rabbits cold" of
the Welsh grace, and you are surfeited with
boiled beef. You hate the sight of the red
and the white, the carrots and the cabbage,
the broad silver skewer, and the big
well-dish, and you complain. "Three times in
a fortnight!" you say, with an ill-tempered
sniff. "Enough to disgust any man!"
It is possible you may be told, meekly,
"You used to like it, or at least you said
you did; but never mind, I have made a
mistake, and you shall not be annoyed by
its appearance again." Whether you are
told this or not, it never does appear again.
If, after a year's abstinence, you ask why
you never have boiled beef now? you are
told that you don't like it; and therefore,
although it is just the very thing your
coal-heaper likes best, and what is most