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Now tell me the rest of the story. How did the old fellow get on after he had buried his termagant wife? That's how I should treat him; and I should get, in return, such a succession of peeps into human life and intent and aspirations, as, in the course of a few years, would send me to the next vicarage that turned up a sadder and wiser man, Mr. Walton."
Rachel could not repress a smile at the rememberance of Jake's termagant mother nad her dirty, comfortless cottage, an how her intemperance in administering such castisement as conveyed most grief to a boy's nature first drove Jake to seek refuge with her father.
He had begun to consider Susan as a termagant; and when he thought of his intercourse with her, recollections of her somewhat warm and hasty temper came far more readily to his mind than any remembrance of her generous, loving nature.
"The French Revolution" as Hazlitt put it, "was the only match that ever took place between philosophy and experience; and waking from the trance of theory we hear the words Truth, Reason, Virtue, Liberty, with the same indifference or contempt that a cynic who has married a jilt or a termagant listens to the rhapsodies of lovers."
Once or twice Elsie had been so far carried beyond her constitutional timidity, by sympathy for the distress of her friend, that she had gone out and talked to the boys, even scolded them, so that they slunk away ashamed, and began to stand as much in dread of her as of the clutches of their prey. So she, gentle and timid to excess, acquired among them the reputation of a termagant.
Termagant Elizabeth had now one Ripperda for Minister; a surprising Dutch adventurer, once secretary of some Dutch embassy at Madrid; who, discerning how the land lay, had broken loose from that subaltern career, had changed his religion, insinuated himself into Elizabeth's royal favor; and was now "Duke de Ripperda," and a diplomatic bull-dog of the first quality, full of mighty schemes and hopes; in brief, a new Alberoni to the Termagant Queen.
It is very well to talk of the pleasures of the milkmaid going out in the balmy freshness of the purple dawn; but imagine a poor fellow pulled out of bed on a drizzly, rainy morning, and equipping himself for a scamper through a wet pasture lot, rope in hand, at the heels of such a termagant as mine!
Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.
And, just think what it would mean if you married a plain, shapeless lass and she proved to have a temper like a termagant! Now, a handsome lass, even if she has a temper, is always a handsome lass and something to rouse envy of you in other men. And, after all, we measure and treasure what we have in proportion as other people long for it.
Tarquin also did harm; for, in his spite against the crew of the Termagant, he made statements which were not true, and his credit as a witness was therefore totally destroyed.
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