had once rashly dreamed of presiding over the clerical hearth as Mrs.
Peyton Hargrove, and having failed to possess her kingdom had become
a merciless spy upon all that happened in the forbidden realm.

"Poor Mrs. Prue! what a warfare exists between her name and her
character. She should petition the legislature to allow her to be
called--Mrs. Echidna! My son, I think modern civilization will remain
incomplete, will not perform its mission, until it relieves society
from the depredations of these scorpions, by colonizing them where
they will expend their poison without dangerous results. If sting
they must, let it be among themselves. If I were lunatic enough to
desire to vote, I should spend my franchise in favour of a 'Gossip
Reservation'--somewhere close to the Great Western Desert, to which
the disappointed widows, spiteful old maids, and snarling dyspeptic
bachelors of this much-suffering generation should be relegated for
domiciliation and reform. Freedom serves America much as Æsop's stork
did the frogs: we are appallingly free to be devoured by envy,
stabbed by calumny, strangled by slander. I believe if I were a
painter, and desired to portray Cleopatra's death, I would assuredly
give to the asp the baleful features and sneering smirk of Mrs.
Prudence. Every Sunday when she twists those two curls on her
forehead till they lift themselves like horns, puts up her
eye-glasses and pays her respects to our pew, I catch myself
whispering '_Cerastes!_' and wishing that I were only the _camera_
of a photographer."

"Take care, mother! would you accept a homestead in your contemplated
'Reservation'?"

She pinched his ear.