"I will do it for five hundred dollars," said Mr. Scribe at last,
again hat in hand.

"Very well, Mr. Scribe, I will think of it," replied I, again
bowing him to the door.

Not unvexed by this, for the second time, unexpected response,
again he withdrew, and from my wife, and daughters again burst
the old exclamations.

The truth is, resolved how I would, at the last pinch I and my
chimney could not be parted.

So Holofernes will have his way, never mind whose heart breaks
for it" said my wife next morning, at breakfast, in that
half-didactic, half-reproachful way of hers, which is harder to
bear than her most energetic assault. Holofernes, too, is with
her a pet name for any fell domestic despot. So, whenever,
against her most ambitious innovations, those which saw me quite
across the grain, I, as in the present instance, stand with
however little steadfastness on the defence, she is sure to call
me Holofernes, and ten to one takes the first opportunity to read
aloud, with a suppressed emphasis, of an evening, the first
newspaper paragraph about some tyrannic day-laborer, who, after
being for many years the Caligula of his family, ends by beating
his long-suffering spouse to death, with a garret door wrenched
off its hinges, and then, pitching his little innocents out of
the window, suicidally turns inward towards the broken wall
scored with the butcher's and baker's bills, and so rushes
headlong to his dreadful account.