ariat since his good father's
time, ate his dinner with thankfulness, and made no remarks. Nor did
he confide to us for a while his opinion that Mrs. Mack bored the
good gentleman most severely; that he pined away under her kindnesses;
sneaked off to bis study-chair and his nap; was only too glad when some
of the widow's friends came, or she went out; seeming to breathe more
freely when she was gone, and drink his wine more cheerily when rid of
the intolerable weight of her presence.

I protest the great ills of life are nothing--the loss of your fortune
is a mere flea-bite; the loss of your wife--how many men have supported
it and married comfortably afterwards? It is not what you lose, but what
you have daily to bear that is hard. I can fancy nothing more cruel,
after a long easy life of bachelorhood, than to have to sit day after
day with a dull, handsome woman opposite; to have to answer her speeches
about the weather, housekeeping and what not; to smile appropriately
when she is disposed to be lively (that laughing at the jokes is
the hardest part), and to model your conversation so as to suit
her intelligence, knowing that a word used out of its downright
signification will not be understood by your fair breakfast-maker. Women
go through this simpering and smiling life, and bear it quite easily.
Theirs is a life of hypocrisy. What good woman does not laugh at her
husband's or father's jokes and stories time after time, and would not
laugh at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, if he told them? Flattery is
their nature--to coax, flatter and sweetly befool some one is every
woman's business. She is none if she declines this office. But men are
not provided with such powers of humbug or endurance--they perish
and pine away miserably when bored--or they shrink off to the club or
public-house for comfort. I want to say as delicately as I can, and
never liking to use rough terms regarding a handsome woman, that Mrs.
Mackenzie, herself being in the highest spirits and the best humour,
extinguished her half-brother, James Binnie, Esq.; that she was as a
malaria to him, poisoning his atmosphere, numbing his limbs, destroying
his sleep--that day after day as he sate down at breakfast, and she
levelled commonplaces at her dearest James, her dearest James became
more wretched under her. And no one could see what his complaint was. He
called in the old physicians at the Club. He dosed himself with poppy,
and mandragora and blue pill