an accomplice:  herself a brazen forgery.  If Turpin and Jack Sheppard were married, very likely Mesdames Sheppard and Turpin did not know, at first, what their husbands’ real profession was, and fancied, when the men left home in the morning, they only went away to follow some regular and honorable business.  Then a suspicion of the truth may have come:  then a dreadful revelation; and presently we have the guilty pair robbing together, or passing forged money each on his own account.  You know Doctor Dodd?  I wonder whether his wife knows that he is a forger, and scoundrel?  Has she had any of the plunder, think you, and were the darling children’s new dresses bought with it?  The Doctor’s sermon last Sunday was certainly charming, and we all cried.  Ah, my poor Dodd!  Whilst he is preaching most beautifully, pocket-handkerchief in hand, he is peering over the pulpit cushions, looking out piteously for Messrs. Peachum and Lockit from the police-office.  By Doctor Dodd you understand I would typify the rogue of respectable exterior, not committed to gaol yet, but not undiscovered.  We all know one or two such.  This very sermon perhaps will be read by some, or more likely—­for, depend upon it, your solemn hypocritic scoundrels don’t care much for light literature—­more likely, I say, this discourse will be read by some of their wives, who think, “Ah mercy! does that horrible cynical wretch know how my poor husband blacked my eye, or abstracted mamma’s silver teapot, or forced me to write So-and-so’s name on that piece of stamped paper, or what not?” My good creature, I am not angry with you.  If your husband has broken your nose, you will vow that he had authority over your person, and a right to demolish any part of it:  if he has conveyed away your mamma’s teapot, you will say that she gave it to him at your marriage, and it was very ugly, and what not? if he takes your aunt’s watch, and you love him, you will carry it ere long to the pawnbroker’s, and perjure yourself—­oh, how you will perjure yourself—­in the witness-box!  I know this is a degrading view of woman’s noble nature, her exalted mission, and so forth, and so forth.  I know you will say this is bad morality.  Is it?  Do you, or do you not, expect your womankind to stick by you for better or for worse?  Say I have committed a forgery, and the officers come in search of me, is my wife, Mrs. Dodd, to show them into the dining-room and say, “Pray step in, gentlemen!  My husband has just come home from church.  That bill with my Lord Chesterfield’s acceptance, I am bound to own, was never written by his lordship, and the signature is in the doctor’s handwriting?” I say, would any man of sense or honor, or fine feeling, praise his wife for telling the truth under such circumstances?  Suppose she made a fine grimace, and said, “Most painful as my position is, most deeply as I feel for my William, yet truth must prevail, and I deeply lament to state that the beloved partner of my life did commit