,"
murmured by Mrs. Dale;--a treatise expressly written for the benefit of THE
DOMESTIC CIRCLE.

It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys so
little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself, like
most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the
search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended
in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced
that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its
collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of
the period, it takes its stand at the close, as in that "Charles dear" of
Mrs. Dale--it has spilt so much of its natural bitterness by the way that
it assumes even a smile, "amara lento temperet risu." Sometimes the smile
is plaintive, sometimes arch. _Ex. gr._

(_Plaintive_.)

"I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles dear."

"Nay, I am only glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles
dear."

"Not quite so loud! If you had, but my poor head, Charles dear," &c.

(_Arch_.)

"If you _could_ spill the ink any where but on the best table-cloth,
Charles dear!"

"But though you must always have your own way, you are not _quite
faultless_, own, Charles dear," &c.

In this collocation occur many dears, parental as well as conjugal;
as--"Hold up your head and don't look quite so cross, dear."

"Be a good boy for once in your life--that's a dear," &c.

When the enemy stops in the middle of the sentence, its venom is naturally
less exhausted. _Ex. gr._

"Really, I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person,"
&c.

"And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should
just like to know whose fault it was--that's all."

"Do you think, Charles dear, that you could put your feet any where except
upon the chintz sofa?"

"But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the children
than," &c.

But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head
of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then assumes the majesty
of "my" before it; is generally more than simple objurgation--it prefaces a
sermon. My candor obliges me to confess that this is the mode in which the
hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the
one flesh; and has something about it of the odious assumption of the
Petruchian _pater-familias_--