o be
found fault with; they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and
lay them on other men's shoulders, but they themselves cannot bear the
weight of a finger.

Now the difficulty in the case is this: There are things in life that
need to be altered; and that things may be altered, they must be spoken
of to the people whose business it is to make the change. This opens
wide the door of fault-finding to well-disposed people, and gives them
latitude of conscience to impose on their fellows all the annoyances
which they themselves feel. The father and mother of a family are
fault-finders, _ex officio_; and to them flows back the tide of every
separate individual's complaints in the domestic circle, till often the
whole air of the house is chilled and darkened by a drizzling Scotch
mist of querulousness. Very bad are these mists for grape-vines, and
produce mildew in many a fair cluster.

Enthusius falls in love with Hermione, because she looks like a
moonbeam,--because she is ethereal as a summer cloud, _spirituelle_. He
commences forthwith the perpetual adoration system that precedes
marriage. He assures her that she is too good for this world, too
delicate and fair for any of the uses of poor mortality,--that she ought
to tread on roses, sleep on the clouds,--that she ought never to shed a
tear, know a fatigue, or make an exertion, but live apart in some
bright, ethereal sphere worthy of her charms. All which is duly chanted
in her ear in moonlight walks or sails, and so often repeated that a
sensible girl may be excused for believing that a little of it may be
true.

Now comes marriage,--and it turns out that Enthusius is very particular
as to his coffee, that he is excessively disturbed, if his meals are at
all irregular, and that he cannot be comfortable with any table
arrangements which do not resemble those of his notable mother, lately
deceased in the odor of sanctity; he also wants his house in perfect
order at all hours. Still he does not propose to provide a trained
housekeeper; it is all to be effected by means of certain raw Irish
girls, under the superintendence of this angel who was to tread on
roses, sleep on clouds, and never know an earthly care. Neither has
Enthusius ever considered it a part of a husband's duty to bear personal
inconveniences in silence. He would freely shed his blood for
Hermione,--nay, has often frantically proposed the same in the hours of
courtship, when of course nobody