Lessons in Life; A Series of Familiar EssaysHolland, J. G. (Josiah Gilbert)
Philosophy
Lessons in Life; A Series of Familiar Essays
Holland, J. G. (Josiah Gilbert)
Conduct of life
No; Mrs. Flutter Budget is not a happy woman; and, as I have
intimated before, she seriously interferes with the happiness and
the spiritual prosperity of those about her. When she can find
nothing to do, then she worries. Those children of hers are
worried nearly to death. If, in their play, they get any dirt upon
their faces, they are sent immediately to make themselves clean.
If they soil their clothes, they are shut up until reduced to a
proper state of penitence. They are kept out of all draughts of
air for fear of a cold; and if they should take cold, why, they
must take medicine of the most repulsive character as a penalty.
If they cough out of the wrong corner of their mouths, she
suspects them of croupy intentions; and if they venture, at some
unguarded moment, on a cutaneous eruption, they are immediately
charged with the measles, or accused of small-pox. If they quietly
sit down for a moment of repose, she apprehends sickness, and
stirs them about to shake it off. Even sleep is not sacred to her,
for if she finds a flushed face among the harassed little
slumberers, she wakes its owner to make affectionate inquiries.
Her husband, as I have already stated, died two years ago. She
worked upon his nervous system to such an extent that he was glad
to be rid of the world, and of her. I think a man would die, after
awhile, with constantly looking at the motion of a saw-mill. The
jar of a locomotive makes the toughest iron brittle at last; and
the wear and tear of a restless wife are beyond the strongest
man's endurance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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