James Ferguson and his wife led a cat-and-dog life, and she is not once alluded to in the philosopher's autobiography. About the year 1750, one evening, while he was delivering to a London audience a lecture on astronomy, his wife entered the room in a passion, and maliciously overturned several pieces of the apparatus; when all the notice Ferguson took of the catastrophe was the observation to the audience—"Ladies and gentlemen, I have the misfortune to be married to this woman."