need protection.  The scoundrel who maltreats a woman receives far less punishment than is inflicted on a teacher who gives a young Clerkenwell ruffian a stripe with a switch; while the howling shrew who spends a man’s money in drink, empties his house, screeches at him by the hour together, is not censured at all—­nay, the ordinary “gusher” would say that “the agonised woman vents the feelings of her overcharged heart.”

Now let us glance at the various sorts of these awful scourges who dwell in our midst.  It may be well to classify them at once, because, unless I mistake many symptoms, the stubborn English may shortly snuff out the sentimentalists who have raised up a plague among us.  I may say as a preliminary that in my opinion a shrew may be fairly defined as “a female who takes advantage of the noblest impulses of men and the kindliest laws of nations in order that she may claim the social privileges of both sexes and vent her most wicked temper with freedom.”  First, consider the doleful shrew.  This is a person not usually found among the classes which lack leisure; she is an exasperating and most entirely selfish woman, and she cannot very well invent her refinements of whining cruelty unless she has a little time on hand; her speciality is to moan incessantly over the ingratitude of people for whom she has done some trivial service; and, as she always moans by choice in presence of the person whom she has afflicted by her generosity, the result is merely distracting.  If the victim says, “I allow that you have been very kind, and I am grateful,” he commits an error in tactics, for the torturer is upon him at once.  “Oh, you do own it then, and yet see how you behave!”—­and then the torrent flows on with swift persistence.  If, on the contrary, the sufferer cries, “Why on earth do you go on repeating what you have done?  I owned your kindness once, and I do not intend to talk any more about it!” he is still more clearly delivered into the enemy’s hands.  He lays himself open to a charge of ingratitude, and the charge is pressed home with relentless fluency.  Then, as to the doleful one’s influence on children—­the general modern tendency is towards making children happy, but the doleful one is a survival from some bad type, and takes a secret malign delight in wantonly inflicting pain on the minds or bodies of the young.  Some dense people perhaps imagine that children cannot suffer mental agony; yet the merest mite may carry a whole tragedy in its innocent soul.  We all know the wheedling ways of children; we know how they will coax little luxuries and privileges out of “papa” and “mamma,” and most of us rather like to submit with simulated reluctance to the harmless extortion.  If I had heard a certain tiny youth say, “Papa, when I’m a big man, and you’re a little boy, I shall ask you to have some jam,” I should have failed entirely to smother my laughter.  Do you think the doleful one would have seen the fun of the remark if she had any power over the body or