“But though you must always have your own way, you are not quite faultless, own, Charles dear,” &c.

In this collocation occur many dears, parental as well as conjugal; as—­“Hold up your head, and don’t look quite so cross, dear.”

“Be a good boy for once in your life—­that’s a dear,” &c.

When the enemy stops in the middle of a sentence, its venom is naturally less exhausted. Ex. gr.

“Really I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person,” &c.

“And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should just like to know whose fault it was—­that’s all.”

“Do you think, Charles dear, that you could put your feet anywhere but on the chintz sofa?”

“But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the children than,” &c.

But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head of the sentence, bow your head to the storm.  It then assumes the majesty of “my” before it; is generally more than simple objurgation—­it prefaces a sermon.  My candor obliges me to confess that this is the mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious assumption of the Petruchian pater familias—­the head of the family—­boding, not perhaps “peace, and love, and quiet life,” but certainly “awful rule and right supremacy.” Ex. gr.

“My dear Jane—­I wish you would just put by that everlasting tent-stitch, and listen to me for a few moments,” &c.

“My dear Jane—­I wish you would understand me for once—­don’t think I am angry-no, but I am hurt.  You must consider,” &c.

“My dear Jane—­I don’t know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for their husbands’ property,” &c.

“My dear Jane—­I wish you to understand that I am the last person in the world to be jealous; but I’ll be d——­d if that puppy, Capt.  Prettyman,” &c.

Now, if that same “dear” could be thoroughly raked and hoed out of the connubial garden, I don’t think that the remaining nettles would signify a button.  But even as it was, Parson Dale, good man, would have prized his garden beyond all the bowers which Spenser and Tasso have sung so musically, though there had not been a single specimen of “dear,” whether the dear humilis, or the dear superba; the dear pallida, rubra, or nigra; the dear umbrosa, florens, spicata; the dear savis, or the dear horrida;—­no, not a single dear in the whole horticulture of matrimony which Mrs. Dale had not brought to perfection.  But this, fortunately, was far from being the case—­the dears of Mrs. Dale were only wild flowers after all!

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX.