The Players, or the Stage of Life Volume 1 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Players; THE STAGE OF LIFE. CHAPTER I. " An infinite deal of nothing." SliuAspeare's Merchant of Venice. " I Wonder," quoth Barnaby Jinks, half aloud, as he leaned against that " Ancient Castle" in which Hudibras and his squire forgot their bruises in the ardour of their logical disputation, ?" I wonder whether they '11 repair the stocks!" " They had good need," replied one who overheard him; " there 's one, at all events, that, for his laziness and his sotting, his bad hours and his eternal spending, ought never to be out of them." Barnaby did not turn; he knew the voice, and even if he had not known it, the style was sufficiently characteristic: there was a pungent person- VOL. I. B ality in the remark, that could proceed from no individual less near and dear, ?he felt it was his wife. Indeed Barnaby did feel; he tingled all over with the thought of the " coming event" which " cast its shadow before;" for one gentle remark invariably led to another, until his patience was sure to be exhausted, and every nerve wound up to that pitch, when a man " wishes it were valiant to beat a woman." So Barnaby, at last, like a galled horse, grew into the habit of wincing beforehand, and giving a kick, at once admonitory and retributive, to the applicant of the lash matrimonial. It was in this amiable spirit that Barnaby replied? " The best things will fall into disuse; the stocks you see, my love, are as rotten as touchwood; and bless us ! what a time it is since my eyes were gladdened with the sight of a ducking- stool ! Our forefathers were good natural philosophers, after all; they knew that the most inveterate shrew couldn't scold while her head was under water." " Oh, there, there! " said Mrs. Jinks, " if that isn't like you ! You'd be pleas'd to see ...