P. Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no more masters than the one we’ve got!  We don’t the least care for you; pray don’t trouble yourself for nothing.

G. Be quiet, Praxinoe!  That first-rate singer, the Argive woman’s daughter, is going to sing the Adonis hymn.  She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge last year.  We are sure to have something first rate from her.  She is going through her airs and graces ready to begin.

* * * * *

And here the voices die away in the remote past.  How difficult it is to believe that this dialogue took place more than two thousand years ago!

As a last glimpse of such a beautiful, modernly remote gem of conversation, we will give a few more words to show what those ancient gossipy ladies thought of their husbands.

The following are the last surviving words which Gorgo gave to the world: 

Gorgo.  Praxinoe, certainly women are wonderful things.  That lucky woman, to know all that; and luckier still to have such a voice!  And now we must see about getting home.  My husband has not had his dinner.  That man is all vinegar, and nothing else; and if you keep him waiting for his dinner he’s dangerous to go near.  Adieu! precious Adonis, and may you find us all well when you come next year!

He might have been a husband of yesterday!

For how many years have the husbands been coming home from work daily to partake of a meal which an attentive and tender wife has prepared for him?  This was twenty-two hundred years ago.

Of the White Woman Who Became an Indian Squaw

The early history of the northwest frontier of Massachusetts is fraught with blood-curdling tales of savage invasions against the home-builders and empire-makers of that once troubled boundary between the French of Canada and the English of the New England States, but there is not a more pitiful story than that which has been recorded touching the Williams family of Deerfield, who were captured by the Indians during one of their inroads in the year 1704.  John Williams was a minister who had come to Deerfield when it was still suffering from the ruinous effects of King Philip’s war.  His parishioners built him a house, he married, and had eight children.  The story of the Indians’ invasion, the destruction of the village, and the capture of over one hundred prisoners is admirably told by Francis Parkman in one of those excellent works of his dealing with the old regime of Canada and New England.