r lives, if a malign influence, born of the devil, had not got
possession of the husband's heart.

This influence, which we may be permitted by good Calvinists to call
diabolical, was, as a consequence, not only in its origin, but also in
its medium, altogether extraneous to our couple. For so far as regards
Mrs. Jenny Dodds, she was, as much as a good wife could be, free from
any great defects of conduct; and as for the tinsmith himself, he had
hitherto lived so sober and douce a life, that we cannot avoid the
notion, that if he had not been subject to "aiblins a great temptation,"
he would not have become the victim of the arch-enemy. Thus much we say
of the dispositions of the two parties; and were it not that certain
peculiarities belonged to Jenny, which, as reappearing in an after-part
of our story, it is necessary to know, we would not have gone further
into mere character--an element which has little to do generally with
legends, except in so far as it either produces the incidents, or may be
developed through them. The first of these peculiarities was a settled
conviction that she had as good a right to rule Tammas Dodds, as being
her property, as if she had drunk of the waters of St. Kevin. Nor was
this conviction merely natural to her; for she could lay her finger on
that particular part of Sacred Writ which is the foundation of the
generally-received maxim, "One may do what one likes with one's own." No
doubt, she knew another passage in the same volume with a very different
meaning; but then Mrs. Dodds did not _wish_ to remember that, or to obey
it when she did remember it; and we are to consider, without going back
to that crazy school of which a certain Aristippus was the dominie, that
wishing or not wishing has a considerable influence upon the aspects of
moral truth, if it does not exercise over them a kind of legerdemain of
which we are unconscious, whereby it changes one of these aspects into
another, even when these are respectively to each other as white is to
black. This "claim of right" does not generally look peaceful. No more
it should; for it is clearly enough against nature; and one seldom kicks
at her without getting sore toes. True enough, there do appear cases
where it seems to work pretty well; but when they are inquired into, it
is generally found either that the husband is a simpleton, submitting by
mere inanity, or a man who has resisted to the uttermost, and is at last
crumpled up by pu