The Fiends Delight | Page 4

that he did not,
for old Abner stood by with a pitchfork and a trinity of dogs.
Disgusted with the selfish heartlessness of society, Joab shambled off
and was passing the scratching-post without noticing her. (Her name
was Arabella Cliftonbury Howard.) Suddenly she kicked away a
multitude of pigs who were at her feet, and called to the rolling beef of
uncanny exterior:
"Comeer!"
Joab paused, looked at her with his ox-eyes, and gravely marching up,
commenced a vigorous scratching against her.
"Arabella," said he, "do you think you could love a shaggy-hided beef
with black hair? Could you love him for himself alone?"
Arabella had observed that the black rubbed off, and the hair lay sleek
when stroked the right way.
"Yes, I think so; could you?"
This was a poser: Joab had expected her to talk business. He did not
reply. It was only her arch way; she thought, naturally, that the best
way to win any body's love was to be a fool. She saw her mistake. She
had associated with hogs all her life, and this fellow was a beef!
Mistakes must be rectified very speedily in these matters.
"Sir, I have for you a peculiar feeling; I may say a tenderness. Hereafter
you, and you only, shall scratch against Arabella Cliftonbury Howard!"
Joab was delighted; he stayed and scratched all day. He was loved for
himself alone, and he did not care for anything but that. Then he went
home, made an elaborate toilet, and returned to astonish her. Alas! old
Abner had been about, and seeing how Joab had worn her smooth and
useless, had cut her down for firewood. Joab gave one glance, then
walked solemnly away into a "clearing," and getting comfortably

astride a blazing heap of logs, made a barbacue of himself!
After all, Lucille Ashtonbury Clifford, the light-headed windmill,
seems to have got the best of all this. I have observed that the
light-headed commonly get the best of everything in this world; which
the wooden-headed and the beef-headed regard as an outrage. I am not
prepared to say if it is or not. A Comforter.
William Bunker had paid a fine of two hundred dollars for beating his
wife. After getting his receipt he went moodily home and seated
himself at the domestic hearth. Observing his abstracted and
melancholy demeanour, the good wife approached and tenderly
inquired the cause. "It's a delicate subject, dear," said he, with love-
light in his eyes; "let's talk about something good to eat."
Then, with true wifely instinct she sought to cheer him up with pleasing
prattle of a new bonnet he had promised her. "Ah! darling," he sighed,
absently picking up the fire-poker and turning it in his hands, "let us
change the subject."
Then his soul's idol chirped an inspiring ballad, kissed him on the top
of his head, and sweetly mentioned that the dressmaker had sent in her
bill. "Let us talk only of love," returned he, thoughtfully rolling up his
dexter sleeve.
And so she spoke of the vine-enfolded cottage in which she fondly
hoped they might soon sip together the conjugal sweets. William
became rigidly erect, a look not of earth was in his face, his breast
heaved, and the fire-poker quivered with emotion. William felt deeply.
"Mine own," said the good woman, now busily irrigating a mass of
snowy dough for the evening meal, "do you know that there is not a
bite of meat in the house?"
It is a cold, unlovely truth-a sad, heart-sickening fact-but it must be told
by the conscientious novelist. William repaid all this affectionate
solicitude-all this womanly devotion, all this trust, confidence, and
abnegation in a manner that needs not be particularly specified.

A short, sharp curve in the middle of that iron fire-poker is eloquent of
a wrong redressed. Little Isaac.
Mr. Gobwottle came home from a meeting of the Temperance Legion
extremely drunk. He went to the bed, piled himself loosely atop of it
and forgot his identity. About the middle of the night, his wife, who
was sitting up darning stockings, heard a voice from the profoundest
depths of the bolster: "Say, Jane?"
Jane gave a vicious stab with the needle, impaling one of her fingers,
and continued her work. There was a long silence, faintly punctuated
by the bark of a distant dog. Again that voice--"Say-Jane!"
The lady laid aside her work and wearily, replied: "Isaac, do go to sleep;
they are off."
Another and longer pause, during which the ticking of the clock
became painful in the intensity of the silence it seemed to be measuring.
"Jane, what's off!" "Why, your boots, to be sure," replied the petulant
woman, losing patience; "I pulled them off when you first lay down."
Again the prostrate gentleman was still. Then when