When Hercules laid down his club, and took off his lion’s skin, and received from the hands of his mistress the spindle and distaff, the big warrior did no more than many a better man has done when he resigns himself to the dominion of love; but no love on earth would ever have made Gustavus M’Iver take upon himself the duties of a woman. He did it from a sheer love of good eating and clean linens—ay, and he persevered in it too, though he saw, as plain as palpable physics, that (what he dreaded) his _petite_ Julia would become a prey to the harpies of indolence. And, to be sure, the ordinary consequences very soon began to shew themselves; for where there was no love and no work to occupy the mind, and plenty of well-dressed victuals to fill the stomach, Mrs M’Iver was, in every respect, a lady at large, and, a lady at large being synonymous with a lady in danger, she fell into habits of going abroad, and calling, and gossiping, and sipping, and tasting, till she became as big a drunkard as ever was seen out of the county town of Horrestia. Yet, still true to her character, she feared Gustavus nothing—no more than she did the good whisky which she swallowed in choppins; and this fortitude made the mischief ten times greater than it would otherwise have been; for, terror being the fulcrum of law and amendment, there might have been some hope of her if she had not ensconced herself behind the noblest of all the cardinal virtues—true blue courage. Though a _petite marchande de modes_, and unable or unwilling to cook a dinner or dress a shirt, Mrs Julia M’Iver knew the rights of her sex just as well as the “guid wife of Auchtermuchty” herself—she knew that Gustavus had no right to turn her away without supporting her, and he could not beat her without subjecting himself to the horn of a summons of separation and aliment; so, upon the whole, she had grounds for her fearlessness, which would have supported her though she had had never a particle of true heroism from the mother of every one of us.