oked chops, to eat with your rolls!

She thinks they are very good, and wonders how you can set such an
example to your children.

The butter is nauseating.

She has no other, and hopes you'll not raise a storm about butter a
little turned. I think I see myself, ruminated I, sitting meekly at
table, scarce daring to lift up my eyes, utterly fagged out with some
quarrel of yesterday, choking down detestably sour muffins, that my
wife thinks are "delicious"--slipping in dried mouthfuls of burnt ham
off the side of my forktines--slipping off my chair sideways at the
end, and slipping out with my hat between my knees, to business, and
never feeling myself a competent, sound-minded man till the oak door is
between me and Peggy.

"Ha-ha! not yet!" said I, and in so earnest a tone that my dog started
to his feet, cocked his eye to have a good look into my face, met my
smile of triumph with an amiable wag of the tail, and curled up again
in the corner.

Again, Peggy is rich enough, well enough, mild enough, only she doesn't
care a fig for you. She has married you because father or grandfather
thought the match eligible, and because she didn't wish to disoblige
them. Besides, she didn't positively hate you, and thought you were a
respectable enough young person; she has told you so repeatedly at
dinner. She wonders you like to read poetry; she wishes you would buy
her a good cook-book; and insists upon your making your will at the
birth of the first baby.

She thinks Captain So-and-So a splendid-looking fellow, and wishes you
would trim up a little, were it only for appearance' sake.

You need not hurry up from the office so early at night, she, bless her
dear heart! does not feel lonely. You read to her a love tale: she
interrupts the pathetic parts with directions to her seamstress. You
read of marriages: she sighs, and asks if Captain So-and-So has left
town. She hates to be mewed up in a cottage, or between brick walls;
she does so love the Springs!

But, again, Peggy loves you--at least she swears it, with her hand on
"The Sorrows of Werter." She has pin-money which she spends for the
"Literary World" and the "Friends in Council." She is not bad-looking,
save a bit too much of forehead; nor is she sluttish, unless a
_neglige_ till three o'clock, and an ink-stain on the forefinger be
sluttish; but then she is such a sad blue!

You never fancied, when you saw her buried in a three-volume novel,
that it wa