barrister does to go to law. If you will not anger her, she will be angry with for thus neglecting her: and you cannot vex her worse, than to be silent, unless you sing or whistle at her folly. She interprets all she hears in the worse sense, and supplies the defect of real affronts with jealous suspicions. She is more captious, than capable of offence; and all her neighbours bless themselves from her, wishing this Quotidiano fever of her tongue cured with a razor. Yet is not that her only weapon; for she has hands to clap with, and nails to scratch with, and teeth to bite with, and much more furniture for war; so that being looked upon as invincible, her bad humour gets her a privilege: for wherever she comes, she may be sure to have the room to herself; nor needs long contest for priority of walk, or precedency at table, or opinion in argument: for the proudest gossip will quit pretensions, rather than stand the shock of her well-known rhetoric.
If she be of the preciser cast, she abuses sacred language in her railing, as conjurers do in their charms; calls her neighbours heathen Edomites, her husband reprobate, or son of Belial, and will not cudgel her maid without a text for it. But now I speak of husband, methinks I see the creeping snail shivering in an ague-fit when
