dgety
person," etc.

"And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should
just like to know whose fault it was--that's all."

"But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the
children than--" etc.

But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head
of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then assumes the majesty
of "my" before it; it is generally more than simple objurgation,--it
prefaces a sermon. My candour obliges me to confess that this is the
mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the
marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the
odious assumption of the Petruchian paterfamilias--the head of the
family--boding, not perhaps "peace and love, and quiet life," but
certainly "awful rule and right supremacy." For example:--

"My dear Jane, I wish you would just put by that everlasting crochet,
and listen to me for a few moments," etc. "My dear Jane, I wish you
would understand me for once; don't think I am angry,--no, but I am
hurt! You must consider," etc.

"My dear Jane, I don't know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I
only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for
their husband's property," etc.

"My dear Jane, I wish you to understand that I am the last person in
the world to be jealous; but I'll be d---d if that puppy, Captain
Prettyman," etc.

Now, few so carefully cultivate the connubial garden, as to feel much
surprise at the occasional sting of a homely nettle or two; but who
ever expected, before entering that garden, to find himself pricked and
lacerated by an insidious exotical "dear," which he had been taught to
believe only lived in a hothouse, along with myrtles and other tender
and sensitive shrubs which poets appropriate to Venus? Nevertheless
Parson Dale, being a patient man, and a pattern to all husbands, would
have found no fault with his garden, though there had not been a single
specimen of "dear,"--whether the dear humilis or the dear superba; the
dear pallida, rubra, or nigra; the dear suavis or the dear horrida,--no,
not a single "dear" in the whole horticulture of matrimony, which Mrs.
Dale had not brought to perfection. But this was far from being the
case; Mrs. Dale, living much in retirement, was unaware of the modern
improvements, in variety of colour and sharpness of prickle, which have
rewarded the persevering skill of our female florists.