The countryman who mistook for a bell-rope the cord attached to a shower-bath, was not more astonished at the result of pulling it, than she was at the result of this trifling accident.  Such an overwhelming torrent of abuse as was poured on her devoted head; such an array of offenses as was marshaled before her; Banquo’s issue wasn’t a circumstance to the shadowy throng.  She had recourse to woman’s only means of assuaging the angry passions of man—­tears, (you know the region of constant precipitation is a perpetual calm;) but these, instead of operating like oil poured on the troubled waters, were rather like oil thrown on the fire.  Pleading her delicate health, she hinted that his unkindness would kill her, and that, when she was gone, her sweet face would haunt him.  Muttering something about one consolation, ghosts couldn’t speak till spoken to, and he was sure he wouldn’t break the spell of silence, he picked up his hat and strode out of the house, slamming the door after him.  For a while, Mrs. Jones was struck with consternation; she felt somewhat as the woman must have felt who, in attempting to pull up a weed, overturned the monument that crushed her; and, though not quite crushed by the weight of Mr. Jones’s indignation, she only resolved to give no more tugs at the weed that had taken such deep root in his heart; and that, if he brought home another meerschaum, (which he did that evening,) it was best to ignore its existence.  Mrs. Jones says she believes that the meerschaum absorbs ‘the disagreeable’ of a man’s temper, as it is said to absorb that of tobacco; at least, her husband is never so serene as when smoking one.  Indeed, it is said that the fiercest birds of prey can be tamed by tobacco-smoke.

Don’t think that after this little contretemps all Mrs. Jones’s authority was at an end; no, indeed; though she had, by stroking the wrong way the docile, domestic animal, roused him into a tiger, she hastened to smooth him down; and time would fail me to give even a list of her reforms.

After having heard her story, as I did, chiefly from her own lips, my wonder at the immense Union army, raised on such short notice, was considerably diminished.  ‘Extremes meet.’  Probably Union and disunion sentiments met in the mind of many a volunteer Jones.  Then, too, I used to wonder at the ease with which men apparently forget their buried wives, and marry again; and, as I then had a great respect for the race, thought their hearts must be very rich, new affections spring up with such amazing rapidity; like the soil of the tropics, whose vegetation is hardly cut down before there is a new, luxuriant growth.  I’ve, however, since come to the conclusion, that the poor man, somehow feeling that he must marry, chooses in a manner at random, having, the first time, taken the greatest care, and ‘caught a Tartar,’ in the same sense that the man had with whom the phrase originated, that is, the Tartar had caught him.