that one would have thought that
the whole country had turned Jews, so little was their affection to the
flitch of bacon.

The next couple enrolled had like to have carried it, if one of the
witnesses had not deposed, that dining on a Sunday with the demandant,
whose wife had sat below the squire's lady at church, she, the said
wife, dropped some expressions, as if she thought her husband deserved
to be knighted, to which he returned a passionate "pish!" The judges
taking the premises into consideration, declared the aforesaid behaviour
to imply an unwarrantable ambition in the wife, and anger in the
husband.

It is recorded as a sufficient disqualification of a certain wife, that,
speaking of her husband, she said, "God forgive him."

It is likewise remarkable, that a couple were rejected upon the
deposition of one of their neighbours, that the lady had once told her
husband that it was her duty to obey; to which he replied, "Oh, my dear,
you are never in the wrong."

The violent passion of one lady for her lap-dog, the turning away of her
old housemaid by another; a tavern bill torn by the wife, and a tailor's
by the husband; a quarrel about the kissing crust, spoiling of dinners,
and coming home late of nights, are so many several articles which
occasioned the reprobation of some scores of demandants, whose names are
recorded in the aforesaid register.

Without enumerating other particular persons, I shall content myself
with observing that the sentence pronounced against one Gervase Poacher
is, that he might have had bacon to his eggs, if he had not heretofore
scolded his wife when they were over-boiled. And the deposition against
Dorothy Doolittle runs in these words--That if she had so far usurped
the dominion of the coal fire (the stirring whereof her husband claimed
to himself) that by her good will she never would suffer the poker out
of her hand.

I find but two couples in the first century that were successful. The
first was a sea captain and his wife, who, since the day of their
marriage, had not seen one another till the day of the claim; the second
was an honest pair in the neighbourhood--the husband was a man of plain
good sense and a peaceable temper, and the woman was dumb.

THOS. HY. PRS.

* * * * *

THE BORROWING DAYS.

(_For the Mirror._)

Proverbs relating to the weather are of uncertain origin. The Glossary
explains the _Borrowing Days_ the three last of