"Because a fellow has six talking machines," said the boarder who
wants to be an end man, "it doesn't follow that he is a Mormon."
It was a wizened little man who appeared before the judge and charged
his wife with cruel and abusive treatment. His better half was a big,
square-jawed woman with a determined eye.
"In the first place, where did you meet this woman who, according to
your story, has treated you so dreadfully?" asked the judge.
"Well," replied the little man, making a brave attempt to glare
defiantly at his wife, "I never did meet her. She just kind of
overtook me."
"Harry, love," exclaimed Mrs. Knowall to her husband, on his return
one evening from the office, "I have b-been d-dreadfully insulted!"
"Insulted?" exclaimed Harry, love. "By whom?"
"B-by your m-mother," answered the young wife, bursting into tears.
"My mother, Flora? Nonsense! She's miles away!"
Flora dried her tears.
"I'll tell you all about it, Harry, love," she said. "A letter came to
you this morning, addressed in your mother's writing, so, of course,
I--I opened it."
"Of course," repeated Harry, love, dryly.
"It--it was written to you all the way through. Do you understand?"
"I understand. But where does the insult to you come in?"
"It--it came in the p-p-postscript," cried the wife, bursting into
fresh floods of briny. "It s-said: 'P-P-P. S.--D-dear Flora, d-don't
f-fail to give this l-letter to Harry. I w-want him to have it.'"
"By jove, I left my purse under the pillow!"
"Oh, well, your servant is honest, isn't she?"
"That's just it. She'll take it to my wife."
There swims no goose so gray, but soon or late
She finds some honest gander for her mate.
--_Pope_.
A clerk showed forty patterns of ginghams to a man whose wife had sent
him to buy some for her for Christmas, and at every pattern the man
said: "My wife said she didn't want anything like that."
The clerk put the last piece back on the shelf. "Sir," he said, "you
don't want gingham. What you want is a divorce."
Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are
wives.--_Shakespeare_.
In the election of a wife, as in
A project of war, to err but once is
To be undone forever.
--_Thomas Middleton_.
Of earthly goods, the best is a good wife;
A bad, the bitterest curse of human life.
--_Simonides_.
_See also_ Domestic finance; Suffragettes; Talkers; Temper; Woman
suffrage.