“Trifles,” says a modern female writer,[1] “make the sum of human-things;” and _she was right_. Happiness depends more on the hourly nothings of existence than we are fain to believe, and a continual dripping of water will wear away the hardest rock. The great sorrows of life are rare; its intense joys rarer still; we have it in our power to embitter our own lot and that of others, or to be to them as a ministering angel and thus bring a blessing on ourselves. Did the young wife prepare to buy a new dress, her husband would term it useless extravagance, and refuse to furnish her with the means for procuring it, even though these were actually of her own money. When she wished for a drive, the horses were required to go to cover, or they had a cough, or were in physic. Did Evelyn in the evening place herself at her harp, and sing in her sweetest and most thrilling tones, some of Moore’s plaintive melodies, or of Mrs. Hemans’ beautiful songs, the “thank you, my dear,” of the kind but unappreciative Squire, would be echoed by a loud snore from his sleeping son, just in the most effective part of the performance. Later, when her health became delicate, as the prospect of maternity dawned upon her, even the visits of a physician in an “illness common to all women,” as the Captain amiably remarked, were an unnecessary expense. Let not my readers imagine this was “malice prepense”—it was only _selfishness_—that bane of married life. Footnote 1: Mrs. Hannah More. Edward Travers was the only son of foolish parents. His mother, selfish herself, and inconsiderate as to consequences, fostered his youthful vices; and even on the rare occasions when the father thought it necessary to correct his boy, the silly and ill-tempered wife ever took the son’s part against the husband she so much disliked, and endeavored to compensate, by a larger slice of cake or an extra glass of wine, that which she did not scruple to impress on the lad’s mind as unjustifiable harshness on the part of the governor. Thus trained up “in the way he should” not “go,” can it be wondered at, if he was innately though unintentionally selfish, and utterly regardless of the feelings of the wife, whose sympathies he never had? Mrs. Travers, Sen’r. also did all she could to foment the dissensions which constantly arose between the two who should have been as _one_. Even the birth of a daughter failed to cement a breach, which widened every day. A son would have been welcomed with joy by the family, as heir to estates entailed in the male line, but a girl was considered as a useless and expensive encumbrance, by all but the young mother herself.