d better be
removed. Removed they are, after a few tears and many struggles; and Pa
having looked at Ma sideways for a minute or two, with a baleful eye,
draws his pocket-handkerchief over his face, and composes himself for his
after-dinner nap.

The friends of the contradictory couple often deplore their frequent
disputes, though they rather make light of them at the same time:
observing, that there is no doubt they are very much attached to each
other, and that they never quarrel except about trifles. But neither the
friends of the contradictory couple, nor the contradictory couple
themselves, reflect, that as the most stupendous objects in nature are
but vast collections of minute particles, so the slightest and least
considered trifles make up the sum of human happiness or misery.

THE COUPLE WHO DOTE UPON THEIR CHILDREN

The couple who dote upon their children have usually a great many of
them: six or eight at least. The children are either the healthiest in
all the world, or the most unfortunate in existence. In either case,
they are equally the theme of their doting parents, and equally a source
of mental anguish and irritation to their doting parents' friends.

The couple who dote upon their children recognise no dates but those
connected with their births, accidents, illnesses, or remarkable deeds.
They keep a mental almanack with a vast number of Innocents'-days, all in
red letters. They recollect the last coronation, because on that day
little Tom fell down the kitchen stairs; the anniversary of the Gunpowder
Plot, because it was on the fifth of November that Ned asked whether
wooden legs were made in heaven and cocked hats grew in gardens. Mrs.
Whiffler will never cease to recollect the last day of the old year as
long as she lives, for it was on that day that the baby had the four red
spots on its nose which they took for measles: nor Christmas-day, for
twenty-one days after Christmas-day the twins were born; nor Good Friday,
for it was on a Good Friday that she was frightened by the donkey-cart
when she was in the family way with Georgiana. The movable feasts have
no motion for Mr. and Mrs. Whiffler, but remain pinned down tight and
fast to the shoulders of some small child, from whom they can never be
separated any more. Time was made, according to their creed, not for
slaves but for girls and boys; the restless sands in his glass are but
little children at play.

As we have already int