The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE STEAM PACKET. tH And yet such an extraordinary concatenation of dwellings not only numbered amongst its inhabitants some very wealthy citizens, but also such very genteel people as the Pifpafs. Mrs. Pifpaf was the daughter of an innkeeper in a country town in Kent, and up to the age of eigh- teen, had scarcely quitted the paternal hearth. But she upon one oc- casion paid a visit to a “‘ carpenter’s lady ” in London; and, observing the pallid faces, shaken nerves, and dainty manners of the capital, she returned home with a determination to be “‘ genteel ’’ and “ delicate ;”’ but whether her disease should be bilious from over thought, or nerv- ous from over sensibility, she had never been able to make up her mind. However, by dint of ‘‘thin potations,’ scanty petticoats in winter, the unrelaxing attentions of the two village surgeons all the year round, and an exuberant sensibility for, and excessive sympathy with, all the calves which her uncle, the butcher over-the-way, immolated in the exercise of his respectable calling, she soon attained her desired object. Thus, from being a robust, hard-working girl, she became a fine lady, and at the age of twenty, might have been as easily seen through as one of QOssian’s ghosts, or the living anatomy himself. At this momentous period, she was courted by Mr. Pifpaf, who visited her native village upon some matter of business; and in a short time she became the wife of that highly respectable and illustrious gentleman. It soon turned out that her husband had got a bad bargain: he was nobody in his wife’s estimation ;—she ruled the roast—aye, and the boiled and the baked too, for that matter; and shealso had a peculiarly happy way of “‘ settling his hash for him,” as she termed it in moments when indignation got the better of extreme good breeding. Indeed, the husbands of such ladies as these never are any body: they are not “‘ known at the gate;”’ but in recompense Mr. Pifpaf, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, was very well known at the public-house, whither he constantly resorted when the ‘‘lady” his wife had turned his stomach by more than the usual dose of tender sensibility. Solo- mon, that eldest of moralizers, says that ‘“‘a foolish woman plucketh down her house with her hands.” We do net mean to differ from the wise king, who certainly knew more of women than we do (he | had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines), when we say ss that our friend Mrs. Pifpaf very frequently plucked down the principal 4 prop of her domicile—that is to say, if her husband can in any way be proved to be deserving of the denomination of the prop. Children are certainly misnamed very frequently, when they are termed “the pledges of affection.” Mr. and Mrs. Pifpaf had three children—three daughters, whom we shall presently describe; but we have shown that they were by no méans guarantees of anything c Gomicbooks