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A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while ’tis so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip, or touch one drop of it.
Shakespeare.
A man may purchase an estate, a tenement, or a horse because they have pleased his fancy, and eventually find out that he has not exactly suited himself; and it sometimes will occur that a man is placed in a similar situation relative to his choice of a wife: a more serious evil; as, although the prime cost may be nothing, there is no chance of getting rid of this latter speculation by re-vending, as you may the former. Now it happened that Nicholas Forster, of whom we have already made slight mention, although he considered at the time of his marriage that the person he had selected would exactly suit his focus, did eventually discover that he was more short-sighted in his choice than an optician ought to have been.
Whatever may have been the personal charms of Mrs. Nicholas Forster at the time of their union, she had, at the period of our narrative, but few to boast of, being a thin, sharp-nosed, ferret-eyed, little woman, teeming with suspicion, jealousy, and bad humours of every description: her whole employment (we may say, her whole delight) was in finding fault: her shrill voice was to be heard from the other side of the street from morning until night. The one servant which their finances enabled them with difficulty to retain, and whom they engaged as the maid of all work (and certainly she was not permitted by Mrs. Forster to be idle in her multifarious duty), seldom remained above her month; and nothing but the prospect of immediate starvation could induce any one to offer herself in that capacity.
Mr. Nicholas Forster, fortunately for his own happiness, was of that peculiar temperament, that nothing could completely rouse his anger; he was absent to an excess; and if any language or behaviour on the part of his wife induced his choler to rise, other ideas would efface the cause from his memory; and this hydra of the human bosom, missing the object of its intended attack, again laid down to rest.
The violence and vituperation of his spouse were, therefore, lost upon Nicholas Forster; and the impossibility of disturbing the equanimity of his temper increased the irritability of her own. Still Mr. Nicholas Forster, when he did reflect upon the subject, which was but during momentary fits of recollection, could not help acknowledging that he should be much more quiet and happy when it pleased Heaven to summon Mrs. Forster to a better world: and this idea ultimately took possession of his imagination. Her constant turbulence interfered so much with the prosecution of his plans, that, finding it impossible to carry them into execution, every thing that he considered of moment was mentally put off until Mrs. Forster was dead!
“Well, Mr. Forster, how long is the dinner to wait before you think proper to come? Every thing will be cold as usual.”—(n.b., the dinner consisted of the remains of a cold shoulder of mutton.)—“Or do you mean to have any dinner at all? Betty, clear away the table; I have my work to do, and won’t wait any longer.”
“I’m coming, my dear, I’m coming; only this balance spring is a job that I cannot well leave,” replied Nicholas, continuing his vocation in the shop, with a magnifying glass attached to his eye.
“Coming! yes, and Christmas is coming Mr. Forster.—Well, the dinner’s going, I can tell you.”
Nicholas, who did not want appetite, and who was conscious that if the mutton returned to the cupboard there would be some difficulty made in reproducing it, laid down the watch and came into the back parlour.
“Well, my dear, here I am; sorry to have kept you waiting so long, but business must be attended to.—Dear me, why the mutton is really quite cold,” continued Nicholas, thrusting a large piece into his mouth, quite forgetting that he had already dined twice off the identical joint. “That’s a fine watch of Mr. Tobin’s; but I think that my improvement upon the duplex when I have finished it—”
“When you have finished it, indeed!” retorted the lady; “why, when did you ever finish any thing, Mr. Forster! Finish indeed!”
“Well, my dear,” replied the husband, with an absent air—“I do mean to finish it, when—you are dead!”
“When I am dead!” screamed the lady, in a rage—“when I am dead!” continued she, placing her arms akimbo, as she started from the chair:—“I can tell you, Mr. Forster, that I’ll live long enough to plague you, it’s not the first time that you’ve said so; but depend upon it, I’ll dance upon your grave yet, Mr. Forster.”
“I did not exactly mean to say that; not exactly that, my dear,” replied Nicholas, confused. “The fact is that I was not exactly aware of what I was saying—I had not precisely the—”
“Precisely the fiddle-stick, Mr. Forster! you did mean it, and you do mean it, and this is all the return that I am to expect for my kindness and anxiety for your welfare—slaving and toiling all day as I do; but you’re incorrigible, Mr. Forster: look at you, helping, yourself out of your snuff-box instead of the salt-cellar. What man in his senses would eat a cold shoulder of mutton with tobacco?”
“Dear me, so I have,” replied Forster, removing the snuff taken from the box, which, as usual, lay open before him, not into the box again, but into the salt-cellar.
“And who’s to eat that salt now, you nasty beast?”
“I am not a beast, Mrs. Forster,” replied the husband, whose choler was roused; “I made a mistake; I do perceive—now I recollect it, did you send Betty with the ‘day and night glass’ to Captain Simkins?”
“Yes, I did, Mr. Forster: if I did not look after your business, I should like to know what would become of us; and I can tell, you Mr. Forster, that if you do not contrive to get more business, there will soon be nothing to eat; seventeen and sixpence is all that I have received this last week; and how rent and fire, meat and drink, are to be paid for with that, you must explain, for I can’t.”
“How can I help it, my dear? I never refuse a job.”
“Never refuse a job? no; but you must contrive to make more business.”
“I can mend a watch, and make a telescope, but I can’t make business, my dear,” replied Nicholas.
“Yes, you can, and you must, Mr. Forster,” continued the lady, sweeping off the remains of the mutton, just as her husband had fixed his eye upon the next cut, and locking it up in the cupboard—“if you do not, you will have nothing to eat, Mr. Forster.”
“So it appears, my dear,” replied the meek Nicholas, taking a pinch of snuff; “but I really don’t—”
“Why, Mr. Forster, if you were not one of the greatest—”
“No, no, my dear,” interrupted Nicholas, from extreme modesty, “I am not one of the greatest opticians of the present day; although when I’ve made my improve—”
“Greatest opticians!” interrupted the lady. “One of the greatest fools, I meant!”
“That’s quite another thing, my dear; but—”
“No buts, Mr. Forster; please to listen, and not interrupt me in that bearish manner. Why do you repair in the way you do? Who ever brings you a watch or
