"Mr. Fogg, will you please let me get a word in edgeways? Our older
children, too, he is simply ruining. He teaches them the most
pernicious and hurtful doctrines. He told Johnny the other day that
Madagascar was an island in the Peruvian Ocean off the coast of
Illinois, and that a walrus was a kind of a race horse used by the
Caribbees. And our oldest girl told me that he instructed her that
Polycarp fought the battle of Waterloo for the purpose of defeating
the Saracens."

"Not the Saracens, Maria; Lucy misunderstood--"

[Illustration: A NOVEL MOUSETRAP]

"Wilberforce, I wish you would hush! His general treatment of me was
scandalous. He was constantly taking my teeth for the purpose of
knocking around the spigot in the bath-tub at night when the baby
wanted a drink, and only last week he took both sets after I had gone
to bed, propped them apart, baited them with cheese, and caught two
horrid mice before morning. I was so hurt by his behavior that I drank
some laudanum for the purpose of committing suicide, and then Mr. Fogg
borrowed a pump in at Knott's drug store and pumped me out twice in
such a rude manner that I have felt hollow ever since."

"I did it from kindness, Maria."

"Don't talk of kindness to me, Wilberforce, after your conduct. And,
colonel, one night last week, after I had retired, Mr. Fogg sat down
in the room below and determined to see if it were true that a candle
could be shot through a board from a gun. He dropped a lighted candle