The major was at a loss how to account to his wife for his shattered condition, nor was he conscious of the disordered state of his nether garments, the rent in which had been made larger by the process of getting him out of the pit. However, as her recovery was almost as sudden as her notion to faint, and seeing that nothing serious had resulted therefrom, he placed her in a chair, and commenced recounting to her how he got into the pit, which he swore, and made her believe, was set for him by his enemies, who had for many years bore him great malice, in consequence of his fame, which, God knows, he had worked hard enough to gain. "La's me, husband," said the artless woman, making him a return of her affections; "it's just what I've a dozen times told you they'd do, if they'd only a sly chance. There's Robins Dobson, who has been trying for years to be Major of the Invincibles, and it's just what his wife wants. She wants to see his name, with the title 'tached, in the Patriot some mornin'. Poor folks has a hard enough time to get up in the world, and when they gets up, everybody wants to pull 'em down. That's the way the world goes." As it had always been a custom with the good woman to believe no greater military character than the major ever lived-an opinion he shared to the fullest extent-so was it the most pleasing thing with him to reciprocate the honor by asserting, whenever an opportunity offered, that history afforded no example of a military hero ever before being blessed with so good a wife. Indeed I very much doubt whether there ever existed a heaven in which love, joy, and mutual confidence were so liberally exchanged as in this, the major's little tenement. As for furniture, it could boast of but little, and that of the shabbiest kind. It was true, there was a print of General Scott hung upon the discolored wall, and another of Zack Taylor, and another of General Pierce, mounted upon a ferocious-looking charger, and about to demonstrate his courage (not in attacking the lines of an enemy) by rushing into the thickest of a hailstorm. By these, especially the latter, Polly Potter set great store, inasmuch as they illustrated the major's taste for the profession of which he was so illustrious a member. I had almost forgotten to mention, while enumerating the portraits of these great generals, that there was hanging over the tea-table (as if to do penance for some grievous wrong committed against that venerable institutution) a picture of General Webb, who had distinguished himself in several great battles, fought in the columns of an almost pious newspaper, published in Wall Street, New York, and whom Polly Potter verily believed, having heard it of the neighbors, to be a wonderful diplomatist, which was rare in so great a general.