“Don’t talk to me, sir, of your Hannah, if you please,” added she; “if I threw myself away upon you, I was not to be insulted with odious comparisons about your Hannah.” “Odious, indeed!” thought Walter, with a sigh; but he durst not express what he thought; for before this he had begun to discover the inflammable materials which his wife’s temper was made of. “I tell you, Kerr,” added she, “the effluvia from your shop is insupportable. It shocks my nerves continually—it is killing me altogether.” “Truly, my dear,” rejoined he, “I am at a loss to understand ye. Really every other person you meet talks about their nerves, and being nervous, now-a-days. But since I can remember, there were no such words in use—that is, as they are now applied. For, when we spoke of anything being nervous, we meant something that was strong and powerful, such as a nervous sermon, or a nervous speech in the House of Commons; and if we spoke of a man of nerve, it was a strong-bodied or a strong-minded man that we meant. But now-a-days the meaning is quite reversed; and when a person is spoken of as being nervous, or very nervous, it is always in reference to some silly shaking body, that has no nerve at all. And it is my candid opinion, dear, that nobody in this country ever complained of being troubled with the nerves until spirit-drinking and hot tea-drinking came so much in vogue!” “O you savage!—you barbarian!” screamed Mrs Kerr, who seemed to have been struggling with a hysteric which now came upon her. We have seen people who have a convenient habit of assuming this pride-produced malady, and Mrs Kerr was now trying the effect of the experiment upon her husband; and the violence of the pretended paroxysm increased as he manifested the more and more tenderness and anxiety to soothe her; and when she had caused him to believe that he had succeeded in restoring her to consciousness—“Kerr,” said she, “we must, if you do not intend to kill me, leave this horrid house.” “Leave the house, dear!” said he in surprise—“where could we go?” “Go!” she replied—“Why don’t you take or build a respectable house out of the town, where a person could receive their friends. You cannot expect any genteel person to call upon us here, to be suffocated with the fumes of your nasty shop and warehouse.” Walter was once more tempted to speak of his poor Hannah, and was about to say, that the most genteel people in the town and neighbourhood had visited her, without once hinting that there was anything disagreeable to them arising from the proximity of the shop and warehouse, or from the mixed goods which they contained. But it is a common saying, and a good one, that “second thoughts are best;” and Walter Kerr thought twice, and when he did so, he perceived that to speak of his dear and buried Hannah again, to her who now was to him as she was, would only be throwing oil upon a flame. He forebore and was silent.