It is sad to see one of these weak sisters when given up to herself after she has lived on the strength of another. As a wife, she was probably a docile, gentle kind of Medora--at least on the outside; for we must not confound weakness with amiability--suffering many things because of imperfect servants and unprofitable tradesmen, maybe because of unruly children and encroaching friends, over none of whom she had so much moral power as enabled her to hold them in check; but on the whole drifting through her days peacefully enough, and, though always in difficulties, never quite aground. She had a tower of strength in her husband, on whom she leaned for assistance in all she undertook, whether it were to give a dose of Dalby to the child, or a scolding to the maid, or to pronounce upon the soundness of two rival sects each touting for her soul. While he lived she obeyed his counsel--not always without a futile echo of discontent in her own heart--and copied his opinions with what amount of accuracy nature had bestowed on her; though it must be confessed more often making a travesty than a facsimile, according to the trick of inferior translators, and not necessarily better pleased with his opinions than with his counsels. For your weak sister is frequently peevish, and though unable to originate is not always ready to obey cheerfully; cheerfulness indeed being for the most part an attribute of power. Still, there stood her tower of strength, and while it stood, she, the parasite growing round it, did well enough, and flourished with a pleasant semblance of individual life into the hollowness of which it was no one's business to inquire. But when the tower fell, where was the ivy? The husband taken away, what became of the wife?--he who had been the life and she only the parasite. Abandoned to the poor resources of her own judgment she is like one suddenly thrown into deep water, not knowing how to swim. She has no judgment. She has been so long accustomed to rely on the mind of another, that her will is paralyzed for want of use. She is any one's tool, any one's echo, and worse than that, if left to herself she is any one's victim. All she wants is to be spared the hardship of self-reliance and to be directed free of individual exertion. She is utterly helpless--helpless to act, to direct, to decide; and it depends on the mere chance of proprietorship whether her slavery shall be degradation or protection, ruin or safety. For she will be a slave, whosoever may be her proprietor; being the pabulum of which slaves and victims are naturally formed. The old age of Medora is Mrs. Borradaile, who, if her husband had lived, would have probably ended her life in an honourable captivity and a well-directed subserviency.