known. A lady, whose
husband had long been afflicted with an acute but lingering disease,
suddenly feigned such an uncommon _tenderness_ for him, as to resolve on
dying in his stead. She had even the address to persuade him not to
outlive this extraordinary instance of her conjugal fidelity and
attachment. It was instantaneously agreed they should mutually swallow
such a quantity of arsenic, as would speedily effect their dreadful
purpose. She composed the fatal draught before his face and even set him
the desperate example of drinking first. By this device, which had all
the appearance of the greatest affection and candor, the dregs only were
reserved for him, and soon put a period to his life.

It then appeared that the dose was so tempered, as, from the weight of
the principal ingredient, to be deadly only at the bottom, which she had
artfully appropriated for his share. Even after all this finesse, she
seized, we are told, his inheritance, and insulted his memory by a
second marriage.

THE MILD MAGNANIMITY OF WOMEN.

A late eminent anatomist, in a professional discourse on the female
frame, is said to have declared, that it almost appeared an act of
cruelty in nature to produce such a being as woman. This remark may,
indeed, be the natural exclamation of refined sensibility, in
contemplating the various maladies to which a creature of such delicate
organs is inevitably exposed; but, if we take a more enlarged survey of
human existence, we shall be far from discovering any just reason to
arraign the benevolence of its provident and gracious Author. If the
delicacy of woman must render her familiar with pain and sickness, let
us remember that her charms, her pleasures, and her happiness, arise
also from the same attractive quality. She is a being, to use the
forcible and elegant expression of a poet,

"Fine by defect, and admirably weak."

There is, perhaps, no charm by which she more effectually secures the
tender admiration and the lasting love, of the more hardy sex, than her
superior endurance, her mild and _graceful_ submission to the common
evils of life.

Nor is this the sole advantage she derives from her gentle fortitude. It
is the prerogative of this lovely virtue, to lighten the pressure of all
those incorrigible evils which it cheerfully endures. The frame of man
may be compared to the sturdy _oak_, which is often shattered by
resisting the tempest. Woman is the pliant _osier_, which, in bending