Mrs Caudles Curtain Lectures | Page 2

world as patient listeners. He was,
perhaps, in more respects than one, all ears. And these ears, Mrs.
Caudle--his lawful, wedded wife as she would ever and anon impress
upon him, for she was not a woman to wear chains without shaking
them--took whole and sole possession of. They were her entire property;
as expressly made to convey to Caudle's brain the stream of wisdom
that continually flowed from the lips of his wife, as was the tin funnel
through which Mrs. Caudle in vintage time bottled her elder wine.
There was, however, this difference between the wisdom and the wine.
The wine was always sugared: the wisdom, never. It was expressed
crude from the heart of Mrs. Caudle; who, doubtless, trusted to the
sweetness of her husband's disposition to make it agree with him.
Philosophers have debated whether morning or night is most conducive
to the strongest and clearest moral impressions. The Grecian sage
confessed that his labours smelt of the lamp. In like manner did Mrs.
Caudle's wisdom smell of the rushlight. She knew that her husband was
too much distracted by his business as toyman and doll- merchant to
digest her lessons in the broad day. Besides, she could never make sure
of him: he was always liable to be summoned to the shop. Now from
eleven at night until seven in the morning there was no retreat for him.
He was compelled to lie and listen. Perhaps there was little
magnanimity in this on the part of Mrs. Caudle; but in marriage, as in

war, it is permitted to take every advantage of the enemy. Besides, Mrs.
Caudle copied very ancient and classic authority. Minerva's bird, the
very wisest thing in feathers, is silent all the day. So was Mrs. Caudle.
Like the owl, she hooted only at night.
Mr. Caudle was blessed with an indomitable constitution. One fact will
prove the truth of this. He lived thirty years with Mrs. Caudle,
surviving her. Yes, it took thirty years for Mrs. Caudle to lecture and
dilate upon the joys, griefs, duties, and vicissitudes comprised within
that seemingly small circle--the wedding-ring. We say, seemingly small;
for the thing, as viewed by the vulgar, naked eye, is a tiny hoop made
for the third feminine finger. Alack! like the ring of Saturn, for good or
evil, it circles a whole world. Or, to take a less gigantic figure, it
compasses a vast region: it may be Arabia Felix, and it may be Arabia
Petrea.
A lemon-hearted cynic might liken the wedding-ring to an ancient
circus, in which wild animals clawed one another for the sport of
lookers-on. Perish the hyperbole! We would rather compare it to an
elfin ring, in which dancing fairies made the sweetest music for infirm
humanity.
Manifold are the uses of rings. Even swine are tamed by them. You
will see a vagrant, hilarious, devastating porker--a full-blooded fellow
that would bleed into many, many fathoms of black pudding--you will
see him, escaped from his proper home, straying in a neighbour's
garden. How he tramples upon the heart's-ease: how, with quivering
snout, he roots up lilies--odoriferous bulbs! Here he gives a reckless
snatch at thyme and marjoram--and here he munches violets and
gilly-flowers. At length the marauder is detected, seized by his owner,
and driven, beaten home. To make the porker less dangerous, it is
determined that he shall be RINGED. The sentence is
pronounced--execution ordered. Listen to his screams!
"Would you not think the knife was in his throat? And yet they're only
boring through his nose!"
Hence, for all future time, the porker behaves himself with a sort of

forced propriety--for in either nostril he carries a ring. It is, for the
greatness of humanity, a saddening thought, that sometimes men must
be treated no better than pigs.
But Mr. Job Caudle was not of these men. Marriage to him was not
made a necessity. No; for him call it if you will a happy chance--a
golden accident. It is, however, enough for us to know that he was
married; and was therefore made the recipient of a wife's wisdom. Mrs.
Caudle, like Mahomet's dove, continually pecked at the good man's
ears; and it is a happiness to learn from what he left behind that he had
hived all her sayings in his brain; and further, that he employed the
mellow evening of his life to put such sayings down, that, in due season,
they might be enshrined in imperishable type.
When Mr. Job Caudle was left in this briary world without his daily
guide and nocturnal monitress, he was in the ripe fulness of fifty- seven.
For three hours at least after he went to bed--such slaves are we to
habit--he could not close an eye. His wife still talked at his side. True