'This rude fellow saith, 'I never learned respect for beauty, I never practised it, I never used it! He who will look for modesty in a peacock, honesty in a fox, and fasting in a wolf, may look for respect in me; not a pound, not a half a pound, not a quarter of a pound, not an ounce, not a grain of respect is to be found in all my stock!'' From the maiden we pass to the matron, under which head we find an unhappy married life described with a pungency which savors rather of an experienced husband, than of a bare-footed bachelor: 'As odious as is a lyre, wherein the strings do not accord, so is marriage, where tempers do not agree. What is such an union but a disunion, a battle-ground, a school of affliction, a scolding-match, a grind-stone, a nest of hedge-hogs, a rack, a briar-bush, a clock always striking, a mental harrow, a pepper-mill, a summing up of all wretchedness!' On the other hand, take his description of a happy marriage: 'It is known how vast was the temple of Solomon. In the first place, there were assembled there seventy thousand laborers, eighty thousand masons and stone-cutters, three thousand overseers. But the most wondrous part is, that during the work, not a stroke of steel or hammer was heard; _nec ferrum audie batur_. This was a miracle! Some say that this was clearly through God's work and aid; others, that Solomon caused to be got a store of the blood of a certain beast, by which the hardest stones were split in twain, without need of hammer or steel; be this as it may, true it is, that in all the work, neither blow nor stroke was heard. 'To this house of God can we compare the house of two loving spouses, where no sound of strife is heard, but every thing fits itself into place without struggle or labor. Such an union is a clock which always stands at _one_; a garden wherein nothing grows but hearts'-ease; a grammar in which nothing is conjugated but _amo_, and _rixa_ is declined; a calendar, whose chiefest saints are St. Pacificus and St. Concordia.' The following veracious tale we earnestly recommend to the attention of the ladies of the present day, without, however, meaning to insinuate for a moment that they have fallen away in the least from the conjugal devotion of the fair Francisca Romana: 'The holy lady Francisca Romana valued such quietude above all things else; wherefore one day, while she was devoutly, as was her wont, reading the history of our blessed Lady, being called away by her husband to perform some domestic duty, she laid aside her book, leaving the verse she was reading, unfinished, and having fulfilled her lord's commands, hastened back to her devotions, when lo! the verse at which she had broken off had been changed by an angel into letters of gold.' The necessity of holding the rod over children, he thus illustrates: