out of "papa" and "mamma," and most of us rather like to submit with
simulated reluctance to the harmless extortion. If I had heard a
certain tiny youth say, "Papa, when I'm a big man, and you're a little
boy, I shall ask you to have some jam," I should have failed entirely
to smother my laughter. Do you think the doleful one would have seen
the fun of the remark if she had any power over the body or soul of
that devoted child? Nay. She would have whined about slyness, and
cunning hints, and greediness, and the probabilities of utter ruin and
disgrace overtaking underhand schemers, until that child would have
been stunned, puzzled, deprived of self-respect, and rendered entirely
wretched. Long ago I heard of a doleful one who turned suddenly on a
merry boy who was playing on the floor. "You're going straight to
perdition!" observed the dolorous one; and the light went out of that
boy's life for a time. A gladsome party of young folk may be instantly
wrecked by the doleful shrew's entrance; and, if she cannot attract
attention to herself amid a gathering even of sensible, cheerful
adults, she will probably break up the evening by dint of a well-timed
fit of spasms or something similar. Dickens made Mrs. Gummidge very
funny; but the Gummidge of real life is not merely a limp, "lorn"
creature--she is a woman who began by being unhealthily vain, and ends
by being venomously malignant. I do not think that many people have
passed through life very far without meeting with a specimen of the
dolorous shrew, and I hope in all charity that the creature is not in
the immediate circle of any one who reads this. In impassioned
moments, when I have reckoned up all the misery caused by this
species, I have been inclined to wish that every peculiarly malign
specimen could be secured at the public expense in a safe asylum.

The aggressive shrew is usually the wife of some phlegmatic man; she
insults him at all hours and on all subjects, and she establishes
complete domination over him until she happens to touch his conscience
fairly, and then he probably crushes her by the sudden exertion of
latent moral force. Shall I talk of the drunken shrew? No--not that!
My task is unlovely enough already, and I cannot inflict that last
horror on those who will read this. Thus much will I say--if ever you
know a man tied to a creature whose cheeks are livid purple in the
morning and flushed at night, a creature who speaks thick at night and
is read