The investigation resulted as I had anticipated. The unfortunate husband now opened his heart, and poured out all his domestic sorrows and tribulations before me. He needed not to tell me that he had not married a fortune, as he had supposed, when I first saw him in the hey-day of his honey-moon; but from the simple tale now unfolded, it seemed that, on the contrary, he had been wedded to Mis-fortune, and all her progeny. The rather turbulent lady of Socrates--(unless Mrs. Xantippe was scandalized by her neighbors)--was a sweet-tempered dame, and "gentle as a sucking dove," in comparison with the vixen who had been harassing his life and soul away for years. The only peaceable hours of his existence were those in which she was too much fatigued with liquor to annoy him. When awake and sober, her temper was little better, and her tormenting tongue seemed to have been hung in the middle, so that it might run at both ends. It is related of Foote, the comedian, that when once suffering from the tongue of a shrew, he replied--"I have heard of _Tartars_, and _Brimstones_, madam; and by Jove you are the _cream_ of the one, and the _flour_ of the other." And next to the Grecian lady above mentioned, the Tartar who bearded Foote, seemed, in my view, to be the only parallel of Mistress Wheelwright, of which the books give any account. How few can bear prosperity! Indeed, although we all covet it so much, the examples of those ruined by sudden reverses of fortune, would probably present a greater number of those who have been raised from poverty to wealth, than of those who have been cast down from a state of affluence to that of penury. An illustration of this proposition was afforded in the family of Mr. Wheelwright. It appeared that after the change recorded in the last chapter, from a condition of the most abject misery, to that of comparative comfort, the Doctor's lady, elated by her prosperity, began to take airs upon herself, and her carriage was such as to excite the jealousy of her neighbors up stairs. The consequences were a speedy and open rupture, so that occasional hostilities were waged between them; and the civil dudgeon ran so high that all attempts of poor Wheelwright to keep the peace were abortive. At last, on the night of my friend's arrest, one of the ladies from above, remarkable for the dimensions of her facial organ, descended to his apartment in a tempest, and insulted his wife. Like a true Amazon as she was, the latter repelled the invader, pursued her in her flight, and like Scipio carried the war into Africa. The tenants above made common cause with Mistress Judy Pettit, and the gentle lady of Mr. Wheelwright was in turn discomfitted, and compelled to descend headlong down stairs, in rather too quick time for her comfort, with a cataract of Irish women tumbling after her. Wheelwright ran to the rescue of his help-meet, and pulling her through the door, endeavored to shut it on