and
ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and arm-chairs. Griskinissa
said, smiling, that she had found a second father in HER UNCLE,--a
base pun, which showed that her mind was corrupted, and that she was no
longer the tender, simple Griskinissa of other days.

I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the
warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole
evening with the crimson plush breeches.

Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor
changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to
foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and
the peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded
up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to
this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into
her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you
have the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge.

Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of his
better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck, and
cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the neighbors
could hear this woman's tongue, and understand her doings; bellows went
skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the floor,
and poor Gambouge's oil and varnish pots went clattering through the
windows, or down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and Simon sat pale
and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the brandy-bottle, when Mrs.
Gambouge was out of the way.

One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a picture
of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced a year
before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and swore in
the most pathetic manner. "O miserable fate of genius!" cried he, "was
I, a man of such commanding talents, born for this? to be bullied by a
fiend of a wife; to have my masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold
only for a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed,
be the art which is unworthy of me! Let me dig or steal, let me sell
myself as a soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more
wretched than I am now!"

"Quite the contrary," cried a small, cheery voice.

"What!" exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. "Who's
there?--w