feigned name, they may look out for a little, strutting, talkative, feeble, meagre, hatchet-faced fellow, with spindle shanks, and a little warped in the back. Thankful Hutchins.
There are a good many more notices in the American papers which show that conjugal infelicity is no great rarity over there. The following exquisite effusion appeared in the Port Gibson Correspondent in November 1825:—
WHEREAS, thank God! my wife Rachel has left my bed and board for the hereafter mentioned provocation: this is to give notice that I will pay no debts of her contracting after this date.—We were married young; the match was not of our own choosing, but a made-up one between our parents. “My dear,” says her mother, with a nose like a gourdhandle, to her best beloved, “now if we can get our neighbour Charles to consent to a marriage between our Rachel and his son, we shall have no more care upon our hands, and live the rest of our days in undisturbed repose.” Here my beloved began to whimper; the truth is, she loved tenderly, loved another—and they knew it; he had no property, however, and that was their only idea of happiness: but she could not conceive how they could feast in joy upon her misery. “Hold your tongue,” says her surly father, “don’t you think your parents know better how to direct your attachments than you do yourself?” “Yes, my dear,” says the mother, “you should always be governed by your parents—they are old and experienced and you are too young to think for yourself.” The old dad and mam forgot that they were a runaway love match at the age of nineteen. But poor Rachel said not a word for she was afraid of her daddy’s cowhide, that he had used sixteen years on nobody’s