id he, "do other people bear them?" As for general
uneasiness, or complaints of lone confinement in a carriage, he
considered all lamentations on their account as proofs of an empty head,
and a tongue desirous to talk without materials of conversation. "A mill
that goes without grist," said he, "is as good a companion as such
creatures."

I pitied a friend before him, who had a whining wife that found
everything painful to her, and nothing pleasing. "He does not know that
she whimpers," says Johnson; "when a door has creaked for a fortnight
together, you may observe--the master will scarcely give sixpence to get
it oiled."

Of another lady, more insipid than offensive, I once heard him say, "She
has some softness indeed, but so has a pillow." And when one observed,
in reply, that her husband's fidelity and attachment were exemplary,
notwithstanding this low account at which her perfections were
rated--"Why, sir," cries the Doctor, "being married to those
sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion
is excited, and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow
one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but _creepers_ at
best, and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about."

For a lady of quality, since dead, who received us at her husband's seat
in Wales with less attention than he had long been accustomed to, he had
a rougher denunciation. "That woman," cries Johnson, "is like sour small-
beer, the beverage of her table, and produce of the wretched country she
lives in: like that, she could never have been a good thing, and even
that bad thing is spoiled." This was in the same vein of asperity, and I
believe with something like the same provocation, that he observed of a
Scotch lady, "that she resembled a dead nettle; were she alive," said he,
"she would sting."

Mr. Johnson's hatred of the Scotch is so well known, and so many of his
bons mots expressive of that hatred have been already repeated in so many
books and pamphlets, that 'tis perhaps scarcely worth while to write down
the conversation between him and a friend of that nation who always
resides in London, and who at his return from the Hebrides asked him,
with a firm tone of voice, "What he thought of his country?" "That it is
a very vile country, to be sure, sir," returned for answer Dr. Johnson.
"Well, sir!" replies the other, somewhat mortified, "God made it."
"Certainly He did," an