still lying in wait for me. I can't heave a patriot's sigh once more over the "Death of the Earl of Chatham." I am too tired to go out and see how the old man of the coasting-vessel is getting on with the crooked nail. In short, I am driven to my last refuge. I must take a nap. The nap lasts more than an hour. Its results may be all summed up in one significant and dreadful word--Fidgets. I start from the sofa convulsively, and sit down bolt upright in a chair. My wife is opposite to me, calmly engaged over her work. It is an hour and five minutes to dinner-time. What am I to do? Shall I soothe the fidgets and soften my rugged nature by looking at my wife, to see how she gets on with her work? She has got a strip of calico, or something of that sort, punched all over with little holes, and she is sewing round each little hole with her needle and thread. Monotonous, to a masculine mind. Surely the punching of the holes must be the pleasantest part of this sort of work? And that is done at the shop, is it, dear? How curious! Does my wife lace too tight? I have never had leisure before to look at her so long and so attentively as I am looking now; I have been uncritically contented hitherto, to take her waist for granted. Now I have my doubts about it. I think the wife of my bosom is a little too much like an hour-glass. Does she digest? Good Heavens! In the existing state of her stays, how do I know whether she digests? Then, as to her hair: I do not object to the dressing of it, but I think--strangely enough, for the first time since our marriage--that she uses too much bear's grease and bandoline. I see a thin rim of bandoline, shining just outside the line of hair against her temples, like varnish on a picture. This won't do--oh, dear, no--this won't do at all. Will her hands do? Certainly not! I discover, for the first time, that her hands won't do, either. I am mercifully ready to put up with their not being quite white enough, but what does the woman mean by having such round tips to her fingers? Why don't they taper? I always thought they did taper until this moment. I begin to be dissatisfied with her; I begin to think my wife is not the charming woman I took her for. What is the matter with me? Am I looking at her with perceptions made morbid already by excessive idleness? Is this dreadful necessity of doing nothing, to end by sapping the foundations of my matrimonial tranquillity, and letting down my whole connubial edifice into the bottomless abyss of Doctors' Commons? Horrible!