While the Parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I propose to regale the reader with a small treatise apropos of that “Charles dear,” murmured by Mrs. Dale;—a treatise expressly written for the benefit of The Domestic Circle.

It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys so little endearment as the word “dear.” But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the close, as in that “Charles dear” of Mrs. Dale—it has spilt so much of its natural bitterness by the way that it assumes even a smile, “amara lento temperet risu.” Sometimes the smile is plaintive, sometimes arch. Ex. gr.

(Plaintive.)

“I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles dear.”

“Nay, I am only glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles dear.”

“Not quite so loud! If you had, but my poor head, Charles dear,” &c.

(Arch.)

“If you could spill the ink any where but on the best table-cloth, Charles dear!”

“But though you must always have your own way, you are not quite faultless, own, Charles dear,” &c.

In this collocation occur many dears, parental as well as conjugal; as—“Hold up your head and don't look quite so cross, dear.”

“Be a good boy for once in your life—that's a dear,” &c.

When the enemy stops in the middle of the sentence, its venom is naturally less exhausted. Ex. gr.

“Really, I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person,” &c.

“And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should just like to know whose fault it was—that's all.”

“Do you think, Charles dear, that you could put your feet any where except upon the chintz sofa?”

“But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the children than,” &c.

But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive [pg 669] freshness, at the head of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then assumes the majesty of “my” before it; is generally more than simple objurgation—it prefaces a sermon. My candor obliges me to confess that this is the mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious assumption of the Petruchian pater-familias—the head of the family—boding, not perhaps “peace, and love, and quiet life,” but certainly “awful rule and right supremacy.” Ex. gr.

“My dear Jane—I wish you would just put by that everlasting tent-stitch, and listen to me for a few moments,” &c.

“My dear Jane—I wish you would understand me for once—don't think I am angry—no, but I am hurt. You must consider,” &c.

“My dear Jane—I don't know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for their husbands' property,” &c.

“My dear Jane—I wish you to understand that I am the last person in the world to be jealous; but I'll be d—d if that puppy, Captain Prettyman,” &c.

Now, if that same “dear” could be thoroughly raked and hoed out of the connubial garden, I don't think that the remaining nettles would signify a button. But even as it was, Parson Dale, good man, would have prized his garden beyond all the bowers which Spenser and Tasso have sung so musically, though there had not been a single specimen of “dear,” whether the dear humilis, or the dear superba, the dear pallida, rubra, or nigra; the dear umbrosa, florens, spicata; the dear savis, or the dear horrida; no, not a single dear in the whole horticulture of matrimony which Mrs. Dale had not brought to perfection; but this, fortunately, was far from being the case. The dears of Mrs. Dale were only wild flowers, after all.