dressed in the gaudy colours of his own
dyeing, Deacon Waldie was an important personage in those times, when
to be high in a corporation was to be in the enjoyment of the truest
elevation to which human nature, in this world, could aspire.

Vain, showy, gaudy, and frivolous, Mrs Deacon Waldie held the same
position to Mrs Todd that the boxmaster did to her husband. She had no
sense or power to rule her lord, who, indeed, would not have submitted
to female authority; but she had what Mrs Todd wanted, and what served
her purpose equally well, and that was cunning--the signal quality of
small, weak minds, and the very curse of the whole race of man and
woman. This insidious power enabled her to detect her husband's
failings, as well as to profit by them--and hence her affectation of
total subjugation to his high will and authority, and her tame system
of according and assenting to everything he said or did, whether right
or wrong. But in all this her selfish cunning had a part; because,
while she pretended to love him, and dote on him and prize him beyond
all mortals, her adulation, her blandishments, and submission were
accompanied or followed always by _petitions_. She contrived to have
hardihood enough to make the most unreasonable requests, and to show
that she was too sensitive, too fragile, and too weak, to bear a
refusal. If her suit was rejected, she flung herself upon the haughty
deacon's bosom, and sobbed; and what deacon could withstand the appeal
of beauty in tears? The sight was the very personification of the
triumph of his pride and dignity. The chain of his official authority,
and the arms of a praying, supplicating, weeping wife, hanging at the
same time around his proud neck, were the very counterparts of each
other. His love of subjugation bent, as it often does, his own head;
and cunning enjoyed its greatest triumph in overcoming one, by turning
his own weapons against himself.

The contrast which we have thus exhibited between these two couples,
is that of real everyday life. The characters of too many married
parties partake, more or less, of the qualities possessed by those we
have now mentioned; but how strangely do apparent contrasts often meet
in grotesque resemblances? Mrs Todd ruled her husband, and he knew it;
but Mrs Waldie ruled her husband, and he was ignorant of it: while the
one followed her occupation for her own and her husband's good, the
other was bent (unconsciously, it may be) on h