“Oh! (goodness gracious me) I can bear my fate no longer, E’en hope (’pon my word) is banish’d from my soul!” _Recitative to that beautiful ballad of_ “THROUGH THE FORESTS, THROUGH THE MEADOWS,” _in “Der Freischutz,” and which, indeed, I once had the music of, for that charming girl, Miss Emily B-yl-s, was kind enough to copy it out for me, but where it’s gone to now, goodness only knows; most likely some of my beauties of servants have taken it to light the fire, or put the candles up with, or something equally pretty. All I know is, it isn’t to be found in my Canterbury, and it can’t have walked out of the house by itself, that’s clear._ Before taking up the thread of my story from where I dropped it last month, I should like the gentle reader to know what a dreadful fidget Mr. Sk--n--st--n is. Though it is but right to add, that I have comparatively little or nothing to say against my beloved Edward in other respects. But even if I had been blessed with an angel for a husband, and he had unfortunately been a knag, still, I do verily believe that I should have found my lot just as hard to bear with as I do at present. For if there is one thing more trying than another to one’s good temper, or more calculated to rumple the natural smoothness of one’s amiable disposition, and to put one out of sorts with the whole world, and everybody in it, it is to have a man always at one, worry worry, fidget fidget, knag knag, from the first thing when he gets up in the morning, to the last thing when he goes to bed at night. Really any unprejudiced person like myself would believe that Mr. Sk--n--st--n was never happy unless he was trying to see how miserable he could make me; for literally and truly, without exaggeration, the man’s chief enjoyment seemed to lie in finding fault with, first this thing, then that thing, and then the other. I declare it’s my firm opinion to this very day, that he used to think of nothing else all the way home, but what he could make a noise about directly he set foot in the house. Only just let him be able to write his trumpery name in the dust on the hall chairs, or let the cloth not be laid for dinner ready to receive my fine, greedy gentleman, or let me be in my morning wrapper, and not dressed to the very moment that he knocked at the door (of course it was no matter to _him_ how much I had been slaving all through the hot day, just to make him comfortable, oh, no, of course it wasn’t!)--or even if he couldn’t find fault with any of these, only just let the forks be a little dirty between the prongs, or the soup be cold, or a little twopenny-halfpenny caterpillar be in the greens, and then, oh dear me, _there_ were fine nuts indeed for my lord to crack--he never knew such a house--he didn’t--like a pigstye--of course it _always_ was--be better treated at a common tavern, he would (then why didn’t he go there, I