No sooner had Edward packed Mary out of the house, than I suddenly found myself thrown into as nice a mess as any lady could well be in. Twist it and turn it which way I would, the blacker it appeared, and I positively thought that I must have sunk under it. But really my husband is so hasty, (though I say it who should not perhaps,) that he never will look before he leaps; and the consequence is, that he is invariably plunging himself headlong into all kinds of pickles, (if I might be allowed the expression.) Indeed, my own dear Edward having no more control over his passions than “a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour,” of course could not keep his tongue between his teeth, but must go flying at our Mary before the proper time came for getting rid of the girl. And dear me! if one has not got strength of mind enough to put up with the faults of other people for a day or two, I should like to know how, in the name of goodness gracious, we can ever hope that men will wink when we walk out of the right path ourselves--or that, if we are so hard upon other persons, how can we expect that they will bear less heavily on us when they sit in judgment upon us. Though for myself, I must say, that I have always made it a rule to let the poisoned arrows of calumny go in at one ear and come out of the other. I’m sure if Edward had only looked at poor Mary’s love of tippling with a proper spirit, he would have seen that it was not so much for a body to stomach after all, and that perhaps the love of drink, bad as it is, is but a trifling vice as compared with the love of tobacco--to which my husband, I regret to say, is a disgusting martyr. And such being the case, Edward ought to have remembered that those who ride about in glass coaches should not throw stones; for of all habits I must confess that smoking, in my eyes, is the most dreadful, and that if I was called upon to choose whether I would sooner be addicted to liquor or tobacco, I really think I should be inclined to take to drinking in preference. Not that I was insensible to the wickedness of our Mary’s ways, but still I do think that my husband might have looked with more Christian charity upon the poor thing’s infirmity, until my other servant was ready to come into the house, and then he might have bundled the creature into the street, as she deserved indeed. For in her absence I was so terribly put to it, that really I should have blushed if anybody could have seen me making the shifts I did. My Irish servant of a Norah (drat her!) couldn’t come in for a week or so, and the consequence was, that I was left all alone without anybody to assist me,--which pulled me down so low that it took several weeks to set me fairly on my legs again. For considering that I had Edward’s dinner every day on my mind, and the whole house thrown upon my hands, it was more than I could bear.