“I do, madam,” replied Mr. Brown, with a shudder; “but I should have thought there might be danger in trusting such very edged tools into such very inexperienced hands.”
Miss Harriet Mountchauncey looked at him with a smile of commiseration.
“Not under my direction, sir. With a firm hand I draw the fangs from that painted serpent—man, and leave him to wriggle about the floor in his toothless insignificance for the instruction of my pupils. I exhaust the history of what is called a love-match—Phew!—to its last results. I show them the slim and whiskered Augustus of three-and-twenty—disagreeable, and forty. I have a trained and well disciplined staff at my command, some of whom are instructed to dun the heroine of one of these love-matches;—Phew!—for their little accounts. A housemaid of unparalleled insolence is kept in the establishment for the sole purpose of giving her notice, because three-quarters’ wages are due to her, and because no man-servant is kept. A room is maintained in a permanent state of squalor up-stairs which is her future home. It then becomes her duty to feed seven Sunday-school children, who have been kept purposely fasting for twenty-four hours on small and insufficient rations of cold mutton. The children cry, and ask for more—but they cannot have it. It is not there—more cold mutton does not exist for them. This is the moment I select for introducing the page of the establishment—do not be alarmed, sir—he is hideous and fifty! I have gone so far as to allow him to smoke a filthy pipe—and to drink a horrible glass of hot rum and water, with his clumsy feet on the hob in the pupil’s sacred presence—that I may say with full force—behold, my love, the destiny of The Poor Man’s Wife,—behold, and tremble!”
A Little Drama. The Mountchauncey System.
“A sad picture indeed, madam; but does not sometimes mutual affection gild and sanctify even so sorrowful a spectacle as the one which you have so graphically delineated?”
“Never, sir, never—except in immoral works