history is more disfigured by their acts than that of any other modern
nation, due allowance being made for the smallness of her territory and
the limited number of her people. This peculiarity in Scotch history is
principally owing to the circumstance, that, as a rule, Scotland has
been more aristocratically dominated than any other community; and
aristocracies are more prolific of assassins than democracies or
monarchies, as before said. Aristocrats, members of privileged classes,
are less patient of restriction, and more prone to take the righting of
what they call their wrongs into their own hands, than are other men.
Violence of all kinds was for centuries more common in Scotland than in
any other European country that had made the same advances in
civilization; and the troubles that overtook so many of her monarchs
were the natural consequences of their position. The House of Stuart has
been called "the Fated Line"; and it deserved the name, because it stood
nominally at the head of a nation that really was ruled by the fiercest
aristocracy that ever plagued a people or perplexed monarchs. The
independence of Scotland, her salvation from that English rule with
which she was threatened by Edward I., whose success would have made her
what Ireland became under English ascendency, was based on a deed which
even some Scotch writers have not hesitated to speak of as
reprehensible,--the killing, namely, of Comyn in a church at Dumfries,
by Bruce and Kirkpatrick; and it seems as if the blood-stain then and
there contracted clung to the Stuarts, who were descended from Bruce by
the female line. The Duke of Rothesay, son of Robert III., and
heir-apparent, was murdered by his uncle, the Duke of Albany, whose
purpose was to divert the crown to his own branch of the family.
Rothesay's brother became James I., and he was assassinated by Sir
Robert Grahame,--the King's offence being that he wished to introduce
something like regular government into Scotland, having learned, the
value of order in England, where he had passed many years as a prisoner.
Grahame was one of the most ferocious of the savages who then formed the
Scotch aristocracy, and he had no idea of seeing radicalism made rampant
in his country; and so he headed a conspiracy against the King and
murdered him. James II. was himself an assassin, as he stabbed the Earl
of Douglas, who had come to him under an assurance of safety, and who
was cut to pieces by some of the royal retainers, after their master had
set them an example. The King's excuse was, that the Douglas had become
too powerful to be proceeded against regularly; and, indeed, the
question then before Scotland was, whether that country should be ruled
by the House of Douglas or the House of Stuart, and we cannot wonder
that a king in the fifteenth century should conclude rather to murder
than to be murdered. James II. overthrew the Black Douglas, and in his
case assassination _did_ prosper. James III. was assassinated while
flying from a field of battle on which he had been beaten by rebels.
Mary Stuart, daughter of James V., is believed by many historical
inquirers to have been a party to the assassination of her husband,
(Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who was her relative,) the question whether
she did thus act forming the turning-point in that famous Marian
Controversy which has raged for three hundred years, and which seems to
be no nearer a decision now than it was before Loch Leven and
Fotheringay,--Mr. Froude, the last of the great champions in the fight,
having pronounced, with all his usual directness, adversely to the Rose
of Scotland. Whether Mary was an assassin or not, it is beyond all doubt
that her husband was one of the assassins of her servant Rizzio, who was
murdered in her very presence. Mary's son, James VI., stands in the
strangest relation to an extraordinary assassination of any man in
history. The Gowrie Conspiracy is yet a riddle. According to one class
of historical critics, the Earl of Gowrie and his brother, Alexander
Ruthven, were bent upon assassinating the King; while another class are
quite as positive that the King was bent upon assassinating the
Ruthvens, and that he accomplished his purpose. We confess that we are
strongly inclined to go with those who say that the Ruthvens were
victims, and not baffled assassins; and we have always admired the reply
of the clergyman to whom the King condescended to tell his story, in the
hope of convincing him of its truth. "Doubtless," said that skeptical,
but pious personage, "I must believe it, since your Majesty says you saw
it; but I would not have believed it, had I seen it with my own eyes."
Was ever a king more cleverly told that he was a liar? The Earl of
Murray, Mary Stuart's bastard brother, and the first of many regents who
ruled Scotland during her son's minority, was the victim of the most
pardonable act of assassination that we know of,--if such a crime be
ever pardonable. Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh was one of those Scotchmen
who joined Mary Stuart after her escape from Loch Leven, and was
condemned to death after her failure, but had his life spared, while his
estate was confiscated. He might have borne this loss of property, but
he became enraged when he heard that his wife had been so treated, when
ejected from what had been her own property before her marriage, as to
go mad and die. The person who misused her had received the estate from
the Earl of Murray; and upon the latter Hamilton resolved to take
vengeance. He carried out his plans, which were very cleverly formed,
with great skill and coolness, and consequently was successful, taking
off his great enemy, and getting off himself. He shot Murray as he was
passing through the town of Linlithgow, stationing himself in a house
that belonged to the Archbishop of St. Andrews, in and around which
everything had been prepared for the killing of one man and the escape
of another. It is beyond all doubt that the Archbishop was a party to
the crime, or Bothwellhaugh could not have had the facilities which
were his for obtaining revenge and striking a great blow for the Queen's
party. The princely House of Hamilton generally approved of the deed.
Let not those, however, who see in the Archbishop's conduct the natural
effect of Catholicism, be in too great hurry to attribute his conduct to
his religious belief; for there were Protestant assassins in Scotland in
those days, and later. Only a few years before, a very eminent Catholic,
Cardinal Beaton, who was Archbishop of St. Andrews, was murdered by
Norman Lesley; and John Knox associated himself with Lesley, and those
by whom he was aided, to hold the castle of St. Andrews against the
Government's forces. The murderers of Rizzio were not Catholics, and
their victim belonged to the old church. Some of Darnley's murderers
were Protestants. In the next century some remarkable cases of Scotch
assassination took place. Montrose stands charged with having attempted
to take the lives of Argyle and Hamilton; but we hesitate to believe the
story, so great is our admiration of that wonderful man. After the
Restoration, (1660,) the ultra Protestants, perverting various passages
of Scripture, assumed to execute judgment on those whom they held to be
enemies of God and the true Kirk. The man for whom they felt most hatred
was James Sharpe, Archbishop of St. Andrews,--a title that seems to have
had peculiar attractions for assassins. Sharpe was accused, not
untruthfully, of having sold his cause to Government; and he became a
marked man with those whom he had betrayed. A preacher named Mitchell
fired a pistol into Sharpe's carriage, and wounded the Bishop of the
Orkneys so severely that that prelate ultimately died of the injury.
Years later Mitchell was about to make a second attempt on the
Archbishop, when he was arrested, tried, imprisoned for some time,
condemned, and executed, at the Archbishop's earnest request. The next
year Sharpe was slain by a number of Protestants, who were looking for a
minor persecutor, and who thought that Heaven had specially delivered
the Archbishop into their hands when they encountered his carriage, from
which they made him descend, and murdered him in presence of his
daughter, using swords and pistols. Among the many stories told of
Claverhouse (then Viscount of Dundee) is one to the effect that he was
shot on the battlefield of Killiecrankie by one of his servants, who
used a silver button from his livery-coat, the great Grahame being
impervious to lead.[C] About the same time, Sir George Lockhart,
President of the Court of Session, and head of the Scotch tribunals, was
assassinated by Chiesly of Dalry, who was angry because the President
had assigned to Mrs. Chiesly, with whom her husband had quarrelled, a
larger alimony than that husband thought she should have. The business
of divorcing, and discriminating as to the amount of ladies' allowances,
is a safer one in these times, and fortunate for the judges that it is,
considering how much of such business they have to perform. If every
hundred divorce cases produced one assassination, lawyers would be
rapidly promoted--and shot.
England has contributed a large number of assassinations to the pages of
that Newgate serial which is known by the grave name of history. One of
her kings, Edward II., is known to have been murdered after his
deposition; and it is supposed that he perished by a peculiarly horrible
form of death. William Rufus is believed to have been assassinated in
the New Forest, though the popular notion is, that he was accidentally
killed by an arrow from the bow of Walter Tirrel, which must have been a
long-bow. Richard II. was probably killed in prison, after deposition.
Henry VI. is believed to have been killed in 1471, he being then a
prisoner in the hands of the triumphant Yorkists,--but there is no proof
that he was killed. Edward V., a boy-monarch, is one of the princes whom
Richard III.'s enemies said he had smothered in the Tower,--a story to
be maintained only by smothering all evidence. Many English sovereigns
were attacked by assassins, but escaped. Edward I. was stabbed by a
Mussulman when he was crusading in the East,--and we had almost said
that he was rightly served; for what business had he in that remote part
of the world? Henry V. was to have been assassinated, according to the
statement of himself and his friends; but he had the satisfaction of
killing the conspirators judicially. Elizabeth, as became her
superiority to most sovereigns, was a favorite with persons with a taste
for assassination strongly developed. She was under the Papal ban, and
was an object of the indelicate attentions of that prince of assassins,
Philip II.; and his underlings, who were all great people, made her life
so uncertain that there never lived the actuary who was capable of
estimating the probabilities of its duration. That she escaped is as
wonderful as anything in her history, for she does not appear to have
been very heedful of her personal safety; yet she could punish detected
ruffians sharply enough. James I. was once in no slight danger. No
conspiracy ever came so near making a great noise in the world, of a
kind very different from that which it did make, as the Gunpowder Plot;
and the silence which marked its course is quite as astonishing as the
excitement that followed its disclosure. That so many persons should
have kept so deadly a secret so long and so faithfully is as great a
mystery as ever was invented by a writer of the sensation school; and
when Catholics declare that there never was a plot, except that which
was formed against their religion by artful men for the worst purposes,
they do not talk so unreasonably as at the first blush it should seem.
This plot was emphatically a gentlemanly transaction. There was hardly a
person who had part in it who was not a gentleman by birth or education,
or both. Catesby, Percy, Rookwood, Digby, the Winters, Grant, Tresham,
Keyes, and the Littletons were all members of good families, and some of
them of very high families,--as Percy, Digby, Rookwood, and Catesby.
Some of them had been Protestants,--as Catesby and Percy; and Digby had
been brought up in a Protestant house. Fawkes was of respectable
parentage and of good education. Father Garnet, on his trial, was spoken
of by Sir Edward Coke as having "many excellent gifts and endowments of
nature: by birth a gentleman, by education a scholar, by art learned,
and a good linguist." He was brought up a Protestant. That Catholics of
such standing, and with such training as should have taught them better,
should have engaged in so wicked a conspiracy, was one of the chief
reasons why adherents of the ancient religion were treated so cruelly in
England for more than two centuries. Titus Oates's invention, the Popish
Plot, never would have found believers, had not men remembered the
Gunpowder Plot. In Cromwell's time, and during the civil war that
preceded it, assassination plots were common, and some succeeded. The
Cavaliers had very loose notions on the subject. They killed an English
envoy in Holland and another in Spain. Cromwell was almost as much a
target as Louis Philippe became after he was converted, for his sins,
into a Citizen King. It is even asserted that he feared assassination,
and he was not in the habit of fearing many things. The court of the
exiled Stuarts teemed with assassins; and projects for murdering the
Protector were there formed, as well as in England. Nothing but the good
intelligence which Cromwell purchased saved his life. Charles II., in
his turn, became the object of assassins' attentions. Some of those who
meant to kill him were superior men,--as Richard Rumbold, who was able,
brave, honest, and pious. True, Rumbold in dying expressed his
abhorrence of assassination, and denied that he ever had countenanced
it; but the distinction which he made, and on which his dying
expressions were founded, can deceive no one, and we find it difficult
to believe that they deceived Rumbold himself. To have killed the King
and the Duke of York after the manner spoken of by the Rye-House
plotters would have been to assassinate them, and no amount of sophistry
could have given to the conspiracy any other character than that of an
assassination plot. William III. lived in almost as great danger of
dying by the hand of an assassin as his immortal ancestor whom Gerard
shot. It shows how common was assassination in those times, and how
loose was public morality, that Louis XIV. was a party to at least two
of the plots that were formed for taking William's life,--that of
Grandval and that of Barclay, the latter known in English history as the
Assassination Plot _par excellence_, and which would have succeeded, had
two or three of the parties to it been left out. James II., William's
father-in-law, was also concerned in both these plots; and his
illegitimate son, the Duke of Berwick, a man of the highest personal
integrity, was aware of what Barclay was about. Since William's time
English sovereigns have had but little trouble from assassins, and that
little has proceeded from insane creatures. George III. was struck at by
a crazy woman, one Peg Nicholson, and fired at, in a theatre, by a crazy
man named Hadfield. We can recollect three persons firing at Queen
Victoria, none of whom were executed, though they all richly deserved
hanging.
Englishmen of note have been assassinated from time to time. Becket's
death was an act of assassination. Two Dukes of Gloucester, of the blood
royal, were assassinated in prison,--one in the reign of Richard II.,
and the other in that of Henry VI. Not a few eminent persons in England
were "done to death" by the abuse of judicial proceedings, which were in
fact acts of assassination. Most of Henry VIII.'s great victims perished
by means fouler than any of those to which Richard III. is accused of
having had resort; and the manner in which his father, Henry VII.,
murdered the Earl of Warwick, last of the male Plantagenets, and only
because he was a Plantagenet, was a deed worthy of a devil. Elizabeth,
unless she is much libelled, would have avoided the execution of Mary
Stuart by resort to assassination, only that her instruments were found
scrupulous. The first Duke of Buckingham of the Villiers family was
assassinated by John Felton, in Charles I.'s reign. Harley, afterward
Earl of Oxford, was stabbed by a Frenchman, named Guiscard, Harley being
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Anne's reign. Mr. Perceval, First
Lord of-the Treasury, was shot by a lunatic named John Bellingham, in
1812, the scene being the lobby of the House of Commons. In 1819 the
Cato-Street Conspiracy was formed by Arthur Thistlewood and others. It
was meant to kill the British Ministers, and the mode in which it was
finally resolved to proceed was to attack them when they should be
assembled at a Cabinet dinner, to be given by the Earl of Harrowby, Lord
President of the Council. Government knew all about the conspiracy, and
allowed it to ripen, and then "bagged" the conspirators. This was in
February, 1820; and on the first of May five of the assassins were
hanged and five others transported. When Sir Robert Peel was last
Prime-Minister, a fellow named M'Naughten sought his life, and killed
his private secretary, Mr. Drummond. Sir Robert was so indiscreet as to
charge Mr. Cobden with inciting persons to take his life!
Russia has lost several of her sovereigns through assassination,
accompanied or preceded by deposition. Ivan VI. was assassinated in
prison, almost a quarter of a century after the crown had been taken
from him. Peter III. survived his downfall but a week, when he was
poisoned, beaten, and strangled. The Czar Paul was so unreasonable as to
resist those who were deposing him, and they were under the disagreeable
necessity of squeezing his throat so long and so tightly, that breathing
became difficult, and at last stopped altogether. The murderers of both
Peter and Paul became great personages, held high offices, did important
deeds, and were received in the very best society, as well abroad as at
home. Macaulay, in his article on Madame D'Arblay, (Fanny Burney,)
mentions the number, the variety, and the greatness of the company which
her father, Dr. Burney, assembled frequently at his house. "On one
evening, of which we happen to have a full account," he says, "there was
present Lord Mulgrave, Lord Bruce, Lord and Lady Edgecumbe, Lord
Barrington from the War Office, Lord Sandwich from the Admiralty, Lord
Ashburnham, with his gold key dangling from his pocket, and the French
Ambassador, M. de Guignes, renowned for his fine person and for his
success in gallantry. But the great show of the night was the Russian
Ambassador, Count Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze of
jewels, and in whose demeanor the untamed ferocity of the Scythian might
be discerned through a thin varnish of French politeness. As he stalked
about the small parlor, brushing the ceiling with his toupee, the girls
whispered to each other, with mingled admiration and horror, that he was
the favored lover of his august mistress [Catharine II.]; that he had
borne the chief part in the revolution to which she owed her throne; and
that his huge hands, now glittering with diamond rings, had given the
last squeeze to the windpipe of her unfortunate husband." He must have
been a nice man for a small party, and a peculiarly edifying spectacle
for young ladies. And then how fit to be ambassador at a court the first
woman of which was good Queen Charlotte! Many words have been wasted on
the question, whether Catharine II. and Alexander I. consented to the
murder, the one of her husband and the other of his father; but the
question is absurdly framed. They consented to the act of deposition in
each case, and that was the same as to sign the death-warrant. The old
saying, that short is the passage of a dethroned monarch from a prison
to a grave, applies with peculiar force to Russia: Catharine II. well
knew that there was no hope for her husband; and Alexander I. could not
have been deceived on such a point. While she was at the height of her
power, Catharine herself was in danger of being assassinated. Some of
the nobles suggested to her son, the Grand Duke Paul, that she should be
deposed and murdered, and offered to do the job, quite as a matter of
course, and with no more of shame than so many English Parliament-men
might have felt for proposing to vote a minister out of office. It was
_their_ mode of effecting a change of ministry, and they regarded the
proposition as showing that they were members of the constitutional
opposition. As Talleyrand told Bonaparte, when news of Paul's murder
reached Paris, "'Tis a way they have there!" Paul rejected the offer to
rid him of his mother with horror. His own son was not so moral, in
after days. Alexander was a haunted man, and remorse made him the crazy
wreck that he was in his last years, and shortened his life. He was
threatened with assassination by the Russian constitutional opposition,
when it was thought that he was giving up too much to Napoleon I.; and
the eventful war of 1812 was the result of his fears of that opposition.
When he was at Vienna, attending the memorable Congress, he frankly said
that he durst not go back to Russia without having added all of Poland
that he claimed to his dominions,--that it was as much as his life was
worth to comply with the demands of Austria, France, and England with
regard to the Poles. This was the real reason why the Polish question
was so clumsily disposed of, and left to make trouble for the future.
Alexander preferred quarrelling with his allies rather than with his
nobles, exactly as he had done when Napoleon I. was his foreign
antagonist. There have been persons enough to argue that Alexander I.
was assassinated, after all, and also that Nicholas was disposed of in
the same constitutional way; but we can see no evidence on which to
found any such argument. When, in the days of the Polish War, (1831,)
the Grand Duke Constantine and Marshal Diebitsch died rather suddenly,
it was generally believed that they had been assassinated by order of
Nicholas, but without any foundation for the belief.
One of the last of the Swedish kings of the line of Vasa, Gustavus III.,
was assassinated in 1792, being shot by Count Anckarstroem, at a masked
ball, March 16th. This murder was the result of an aristocratical
conspiracy, the King having done much to lessen the power of the
nobility. He was engaged at the time he was shot in getting up a crusade
against revolutionary France, of which he purposed being the head. He
survived his wound thirteen days.
An attempt to assassinate Joseph I., King of Portugal, was made in 1758,
when the celebrated Marquis of Pombal was the real ruler of that
country. Many executions took place, including several of the highest
nobles. The Jesuits, who were then very unpopular, and against whom most
European governments were directing their power, were charged with this
crime, and some of them were put to death, and the rest banished from
Portugal.
In the year 1831, Count Capo d'Istria, then President of Greece, was
assassinated at Nauplia, by the brothers Mauromichalis. He was supposed
to be a mere tool of Russia, in whose service much of his life had
passed. He was by birth a Greek of the Ionian Islands; and after they
had become a portion of Napoleon I.'s empire, he took office in Russia,
rising very high. Employed to look after Russia's interests in Greece,
he was ultimately chosen President of the latter country in 1827.
Popular at first, he soon became odious, and was nothing but a Russian
agent. His death probably cut short plans which, had they succeeded,
would have had much effect on the course of European events. In the old
land, where it was considered a sacred duty to kill tyrants, he was
suddenly slain as he was entering a church. His death caused little
regret, though the deed of the Mauromichalis was warmly condemned; many
persons being ready to profit from crimes the perpetration of which they
are swift to condemn, and as ready to execute the perpetrators.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] The word _assassin_, according to that eminent Orientalist Sylvestre
de Sacy, is derived from _hashish_, being the liquid preparation on
which the Old Man of the Mountain used to intoxicate his operators, and
which appears to have been an uncommonly powerful tipple. The men whom
he thus drugged, or _hocused_, when they were to commit murder, "were
called, in Arabic, _Hashishin_ in the plural, and _Hashishi_ in the
singular." The Crusaders brought the word from the East. The ancients
had not the word, but they had the thing, as the English suffer from
_ennui_, but have no name for it. A temperance lecturer might turn this
connection between blind drunkenness and reckless murder to some good
purpose.
[C] Mr. De Quincey's immortal Connoisseur, who delivered the Williams
Lecture on Murder, speaking of the supposed assassination of Gustavus
Adolphus, at the Battle of Lutzen, says,--"The King of Sweden's
assassination, by-the-by, is doubted by many writers,--Harte amongst
others; but they are wrong. He was murdered; and I consider his murder
unique in its excellence; for he was murdered at noonday, and on the
field of battle,--a feature of original conception, which occurs in no
other work of art that I remember." His memory was bad. He must have
heard the story that Desaix was murdered on the field of Marengo, after
coming up to save Bonaparte from destruction; and he must also have
heard the story that Dundee was murdered at Killiecrankie. Mr. Hawthorne
mentions that he saw, in an old volume of Colonial newspapers, "a report
that General Wolfe was slain, not by the enemy, but by a shot from his
own soldiers." All these reports are just as well founded as that which
represents Gustavus Adolphus as having been assassinated. Harte's doubts
are, as the reader can see by referring to his work, well sustained, and
leave the impression that the King was killed in fair fight. We have
heard a very ingenious argument in support of the proposition that
Stonewall Jackson was assassinated by some of his own men,--and there is
some mystery about the cause or occasion of his death.
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.
VII.
LITTLE FOXES.--PART VI.
DISCOURTESY.
"For my part," said my wife, "I think one of the greatest destroyers of
domestic peace is Discourtesy. People neglect, with their nearest
friends, those refinements and civilities which they practise with
strangers."
"My dear Madam, I am of another opinion," said Bob Stephens. "The
restraints of etiquette, the formalities of ceremony, are beauteous
enough in out-door life; but when a man comes home, he wants leave to
take off his tight boots and gloves, wear the gown and slippers, and
speak his mind freely without troubling his head where it hits.
Home-life should be the communion of people who have learned to
understand each other, who allow each other a generous latitude and
freedom. One wants one place where he may feel at liberty to be tired or
dull or disagreeable without ruining his character. Home is the place
where we should expect to live somewhat on the credit which a full
knowledge of each other's goodness and worth inspires; and it is not
necessary for intimate friends to go every day through those civilities
and attentions which they practise with strangers, any more than it is
necessary, among literary people, to repeat the alphabet over every day
before one begins to read."
"Yes," said Jennie, "when a young gentleman is paying his addresses, he
helps a young lady out of a carriage so tenderly, and holds back her
dress so adroitly, that not a particle of mud gets on it from the
wheels; but when the mutual understanding is complete, and the affection
perfect, and she is his wife, he sits still and holds the horse and lets
her climb out alone. To be sure, when pretty Miss Titmouse is visiting
them, he still shows himself gallant, flies from the carriage, and holds
back _her_ dress: that's because he doesn't love her nor she him, and
they are _not_ on the ground of mutual affection. When a gentleman is
only engaged, or a friend, if you hem him a cravat or mend his gloves,
he thanks you in the blandest manner; but when you are once sure of his
affection, he only says, 'Very well; now I wish you would look over my
shirts, and mend that rip in my coat,--and be sure don't forget it, as
you did yesterday.' For all which reasons," said Miss Jennie, with a
toss of her pretty head, "I mean to put off marrying as long as
possible, because I think it far more agreeable to have gentlemen
friends with whom I stand on the ground of ceremony and politeness than
to be restricted to one who is living on the credit of his affection. I
don't want a man who gapes in my face, reads a newspaper all
breakfast-time while I want somebody to talk to, smokes cigars all the
evening, or reads to himself when I would like him to be entertaining,
and considers his affection for me as his right and title to make
himself generally disagreeable. If he has a bright face, and pleasant,
entertaining, gallant ways, I like to be among the ladies who may have
the benefit of them, and should take care how I lost my title to it by
coming with him on to the ground of domestic affection."
"Well, Miss Jennie," said Bob, "it isn't merely our sex who are guilty
of making themselves less agreeable after marriage. Your dapper little
fairy creatures, who dazzle us so with wondrous and fresh toilettes, who
are so trim and neat and sprightly and enchanting, what becomes of them
after marriage? If _he_ reads the newspaper at the breakfast-table,
perhaps it's because there is a sleepy, dowdy woman opposite, in a faded
gingham wrapper, put on in the sacredness of domestic privacy, and
perhaps she has laid aside those crisp, sparkling, bright little
sayings and doings that used to make it impossible to look at or listen
to anybody else when she was about. Such things are, sometimes, among
the goddesses, I believe. Of course, Marianne and I know nothing of
these troubles; we, being a model pair, sit among the clouds and
speculate on all these matters as spectators merely."
"Well, you see what your principle leads to, carried out," said Jennie.
"If home is merely the place where one may feel at liberty to be tired
or dull or disagreeable, without losing one's character, I think the
women have far more right to avail themselves of the liberty than the
men; for all the lonesome, dull, disagreeable part of home-life comes
into their department. It is they who must keep awake with the baby, if
it frets; and if they do not feel spirits to make an attractive toilette
in the morning, or have not the airy, graceful fancies that they had
when they were girls, it is not so very much against them. A housekeeper
and nursery-maid cannot be expected to be quite as elegant in her
toilette and as entertaining in her ways as a girl without a care in her
father's house; but I think that this is no excuse for husbands'
neglecting the little civilities and attentions which they used to show
before marriage. They are strong and well and hearty; go out into the
world and hear and see a great deal that keeps their minds moving and
awake; and they ought to entertain their wives after marriage just as
their wives entertained them before. That's the way my husband must do,
or I will never have one,--and it will be small loss, if I don't," said
Miss Jennie.
"Well," said Bob, "I must endeavor to initiate Charley Sedley in time."
"Charley Sedley, Bob!" said Jennie, with crimson indignation. "I wonder
you will always bring up that old story, when I've told you a hundred
times how disagreeable it is! Charley and I are good friends, but"----
"There, there," said Bob, "that will do; you don't need to proceed
further."
"You only said that because you couldn't answer my argument," said
Jennie.
"Well, my dear," said Bob, "you know everything has two sides to it, and
I'll admit that you have brought up the opposite side to mine quite
handsomely; but, for all that, I am convinced, that, if what I said was
not really the truth, yet the truth lies somewhere in the vicinity of
it. As I said before, so I say again, true love ought to beget a freedom
which shall do away with the necessity of ceremony, and much may and
ought to be tolerated among near and dear friends that would be
discourteous among strangers. I am just as sure of this as of anything
in the world."