_The Farmer's Wife_ (1780).

COUSIN COPELAND, a little old bachelor, courtly and quaint, who lives
in "Old Gardiston," the home of his ancestors "befo' de wah." He has
but one suit of clothes, so he dresses for dinner by donning a ruffled
shirt and a flower in his buttonhole. His work is among "documents,"
his life in the past; without murmur at poverty or change he keeps
up the even routine of life until one evening, trying to elevate his
gentle little voice as he reads to his niece, so as to be heard above
the rain and wind, it fails.

"Four days afterward he died, gentle and
placid to the last. He was an old man, although
no one had ever thought so."--Constance
Fennimore Woolson, _Southern Sketches_, (1880).

COUSIN MICHEL or MICHAEL, the nickname of a German, as John Bull is of
an Englishman, Brother Jonathan of an American, Colin Tampon a Swiss,
John Chinaman a Chinese, etc.

COUVADE (_2 syl._), a man who takes the place of his wife when she is
in child-bed. In these cases the man lies a-bed, and the woman does
the household duties. The people called "Gold Tooth," in the confines
of Burmah, are _couvades_. M. Francisque Michel tells us the custom
still exists in Biscay; and Colonel Yule assures us that it is common
in Yunnan and among the Miris in Upper Assam. Mr.

Tylor has observed the same custom among the Caribs of the West
Indies, the Abipones of Central South America, the aborigines of
California, in Guiana, in West Africa, and in the Indian Archipelago.
Diodorus speaks of it as existing at one time in Corsica; Strabo says
the custom prevailed in the north of Spain; and Apollonius Rhodius
that the Tabarenes on the Euxine Sea observed the same:

In the Tabarenian land,
When some good woman bears her lord a babe,
'_Tis he_ is swathed, and groaning put to bed;
While she arising tends his bath and serves
Nice possets for her husband in the straw.
Apollonius Rhodius, _Argonautic Exp_

COVERLEY (_Sir Roger de_), a member of an hypothetical club, noted
for his modesty, generosity, hospitality, and eccentric whims; most
courteous to his neighbors, most affectionate to his family, most
amiable to his domestics. Sir Roger, who figures in thirty papers
of the _Spectator_, is the very beau-ideal of an amiable country
gentleman of Queen Anne's time.

What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without
his follies and his charming little brain-cracks? If
the good knight did not call out to t