henceforward the poor general had considerably the worst of it.
She became so provoking that I wondered how he could refrain from an
explosion. To do him justice, he did at last threaten to get out of the
carriage; upon which, roused by me, she collared him--and conquered.
When he got to his own district, things grew worse, for if any
_aide-de-camp_ offended her she insisted that he might be publicly
reprimanded; and should the poor general refuse she would with her own
hands confer a caning upon the delinquent. The additional force she had
gained in me was too much odds against the poor general, and he died of
a broken heart, six months after my _liaison_ with his wife. She after
this became so dreaded and detested, that a conspiracy was formed to
poison her; this daunted even me, so I left her without delay,--_et me
voici_!"

"Humph," said Meekness, with an air of triumph, "I, at least, have been
more successful than you. On seeing much in the papers of the cruelties
practised by the Turks on the Greeks, I thought my presence would enable
the poor sufferers to bear their misfortunes calmly. I went to Greece,
then, at a moment when a well-planned and practicable scheme of
emancipating themselves from the Turkish yoke was arousing their youth.
Without confining myself to one individual, I flitted from breast
to breast; I meekened the whole nation; my remonstrances against the
insurrection succeeded, and I had the satisfaction of leaving a
whole people ready to be killed or strangled with the most Christian
resignation in the world."

The Virtues, who had been a little cheered by the opening
self-complacence of Meekness, would not, to her great astonishment,
allow that she had succeeded a whit more happily than her sisters, and
called next upon Modesty for her confession.

"You know," said that amiable young lady, "that I went to London in
search of a situation. I spent three months of the twelve in going from
house to house, but I could not get a single person to receive me.
The ladies declared that they never saw so old-fashioned a gawkey, and
civilly recommended me to their abigails; the abigails turned me
round with a stare, and then pushed me down to the kitchen and the fat
scullion-maids, who assured me that, 'in the respectable families they
had the honour to live in, they had never even heard of my name.' One
young housemaid, just from the country, did indeed receive me with some
sort of civility; but she very