husband, sixteen miles from a baker, and he a bad one, all these same
qualities would have come out more fitly in a _good_ loaf of bread.

"I cannot express what consolation this germ of an idea spread over my
uncongenial life during the years we lived at that savage place, where
my two immediate predecessors had gone _mad_, and the third had taken
to drink."

While enjoying the description which Mrs. Carlyle has painted in such
an entertaining manner, it is well to observe that she does not blame
her husband. She seems to be writing the account while she is silently
laughing at the absurd preparation her life had had for the duties of
the wife of a poor man. But Mr. T.P. O'Connor, who writes in 1895, is
outspoken:

"I do not want to speak disrespectfully of poor Carlyle, but in spirit
it is somewhat hard to keep one's hand off him, as we reconstruct
those scenes in the gaunt house at Craigenputtock. There is a little
detail in one scene which adds a deeper horror. I have said that Mrs.
Carlyle had to scrub the floors, and as she scrubbed them Carlyle
would look on smoking--drawing in from tobacco pleasant
comfortableness and easy dreams--while his poor drudge panted and
sighed over the hard work, which she had never done before. Do you not
feel that you would like to break the pipe in his mouth, and shake him
off the chair, and pitch him on to the floor, to take a share of the
physical burden which his shoulders were so much more able to bear?"

Another anecdote is that at a dinner while Carlyle was monopolizing
the conversation, talking as only he could talk, he, the irritable,
turned upon his wife with "Jeanie, don't breathe so hard!" And still
again, we hear it said that Tennyson once remarked it was well the
Carlyles had married each other for if each had married another there
would have been _four_ instead of _two_ unhappy people. But I think
the truer remark was made when Tennyson said to his son, Hallam: "Mr.
and Mrs. Carlyle on the whole enjoy life together, or else they would
not have chaffed one another so heartily."

The _Century_ of some years ago contained this witty skit from the pen
of Bessie Chandler:

And I sit here, thinking, thinking,
How your life was one long winking
At Thomas' faults and failings, and his undue share of bile!
Won't you own, dear, just between us,
That this living with a genius
Isn't, after all, so pleasant,--is it,