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I would mention the conduct of Mrs. Mountchessington Lawk as being, for nearly a year, really saintly. Even the rare intervals at which she visited were marked by a manner the reverse of familiar. Almost every evening she would stand on the opposite side of the street, gazing wistfully at us as we sat in the window; but no persuasion induced her to pay a formal visit more than once a fortnight.

With this striking evidence of my wisdom before me, I grew worldly. I think that during that short year I possessed a better opinion of myself and my capacity than ever before or since.

Worse than this, I grew pharisaical. I ventured to pity my less fortunate neighbors, bound hand and foot to the slavery of mothers-in-law. I attempted to joke them, and poke them severely in the ribs with my knuckles, when the magic name was mentioned. So often did I congratulate myself on the shrewd stroke of genius displayed, that I fear even her respectability became sadly impaired in my mind, and depreciated to such an extent that I was gradually led to think of her irreverently as an “old gal.”

“Too much for you, old gal,” got to be an exclamation so wonderfully consoling that, it crept into my sleep, and in those halcyon days I often waked up by the side of Malinda Jane, muttering the words, “Too much for you, old gal.” Waked up, I think I said. Ah! would I had never waked up, particularly on the dismal clouds which for a season darkened my domestic sunshine!

Scarce half a twelvemonth elapsed, ere the retiring disposition of Malinda Jane seemed to shrink into even greater seclusion. I frequently found her powerful mind wandering, and her eyes fixed on vacancy. In our evening walks, which invariably preceded retiring for the night, she leaned heavily on my arm.

Although the appearance of our daily repasts did not seem to justify it, the cash demands for market-bills suddenly became enormous; and, when I expostulated, my reasonable objections only produced tears. An apparently needless grief had crept into our quiet home, and a lack of confidence that pained me. For many weeks I helplessly pondered the unaccountable mystery.

At last (oh that it had taken any shape but that!) the enigma developed itself. Returning home one day, I had straightened my collar and smoothed my hair before opening the door (feeling a proper pride in my personal appearance, these preparations are usually a preliminary step), when suddenly, just as the portal moved on its hinges, my sense of smell was saluted with the odorous fumes of gin. From the first suffocating whiff of this aromatic cordial do I date the commencement of my grief. Malinda Jane, I knew, never indulged in as much as a sip of Cologne: so, convinced that the breach of discipline was the guilty act of a servant, with all the offended dignity I could embody in my deportment, I went straight to the chamber of my wife.

Without being deficient in moral courage, I am not a boisterous man. I do not boast of an eye like Mars, to threaten and command, or glory in producing a shudder with the creaking of my shoes. I mention this to show that my manner, though rebuking, was not intended to be severe. To awe by my authority, and soothe by my condescension, was the design; but even in this limited effort I am conscious of a lamentable failure.

Seated upon the floor, within an airy castle of dry-goods, whose battlements of flannel and linen cambric frowningly encircled her, was Malinda Jane. Before it, like an investing army, with colors flying, and a face radiant with defiant triumph, was Mrs. Mountchessington Lawk. She had complacently opened the siege with the mixture of a hot gin-toddy. My appearance upon this warlike scene was the signal for a salute both loud and watery (in short, tearful), entered into with a mutual heartiness by besieger and besieged. It was, moreover, rendered impressive by a waving spoon, which Mrs. Mountchessington Lawk moved solemnly backward and forward in a warning, funereal manner, as though protesting against some appalling fate. That she was in possession of my apartment, if not my house, I instinctively realized. She sat bolt upright, firm and strong as a Hindoo idol on its altar; a nebulous glare invested her head with a halo, through which bristling hair-pins stuck out in all directions, like lightning-rods with fitfully luminous points. The crystal wall of spectacles that bridged her nose seemed graven with the cabalistic words, “I’ve got you.” A feeling of conscious guilt, of what an enfeebled mind failed to grasp, succumbed to the shock.