"Here lies, returned to Clay, Miss Arabella Young, Who, on the first of May, Began to hold her tongue." "Beneath this silent stone is laid A noisy, antiquated maid, Who from her cradle talked till death, And ne'er before was out of breath." Other proverbs that deal with womankind are the following:--"He that has a wife has strife"; "Of all tame beasts sluts are the worst"; "If a woman were as little as good, a peascod would make her a gown and a hood"; "He that loses his wife and a farthing hath great loss of the farthing"; "Every man can tame a shrew but he that hath her"; "Lips, however rosy, must be fed"; "Women, wind, and fortune soon change." The feminine readiness to take refuge in tears is responsible for the following cynical adage:--"It is no more sin to see a woman weep than to see a goose go barefoot."[237:A] Another well-known proverb is that "No mischief in the world is done, but a woman is always one"; while the French say, if any inexplicable trouble breaks out, "Cherchez la femme"--in the assured belief that a woman is in some way or another at the bottom of it. Lamartine, on the other hand, declares that "There is a woman at the beginning of all great things." There is considerable truth in both statements, antagonistic as they are. In the household where the unfortunate husband has allowed the control to slip into the hands of his wife, "The grey mare is the better horse." The French call this "Le marriage d'epervier"--a hawk's wedding, because the female hawk is the bigger bird. In "A Treatyse Shewing and Declaring the Pryde and Abuse of Women Now a Days," c. 1550, we find: "What! shall the graye mayre be the better horse, And be wanton styll at home? Naye, then, welcome home, Syr Woodcocke, Ye shall be tamed anone." Heywood, writing in the year 1546, has the couplet: "She is, quoth he, bent to force you perforce, To know that the grey mare is the better horse," and in many of the old plays the saying crops up: "Ill thrives that hapless family that shows A cock that's silent and a hen that crows; I know not which live more unnatural lives, Obeying husbands, or commanding wives." "The whistling maid" and "the crowing hen" are alike held objectionable, these masculine performances being considered entirely out of place and of bad omen. The perils of matrimony would, according to the proverb-mongers, appear to be so great that we can scarcely wonder at the counsel: "If that a batchelor thou bee Keepe the same style, be ruled by mee, Lest that repentance all too late Rewarde thee withe a broken pate. Iff thou be yonge then marye not yett, Iff thou be olde thou hast more wytt: For yonge men's wyves wyll not be taught, And olde men's wyves bee good for nought."