these trowsers of yours? Yes, Mr. Amble, you preach patience to women,
but this is too much for any woman's endurance. Now, do attempt to
picture to yourself what an agony it must be to me:--he will shave, and
he will wear those enormously high trowsers that, when they are braced,
reach up behind to the nape of his neck! Only yesterday morning, as I
was lying in bed, I could see him in his dressing-room. I tell you: he
will shave, and he will choose the time for shaving early after he has
braced these immensely high trowsers that make such a placard of him.
Oh, my goodness! My dear Romer, I have said to him fifty times if I have
said it once, my goodness me! why can you not get decent trowsers such as
other men wear? He has but one answer--he has been accustomed to wear
those trowsers, and he would not feel at home in another pair. And what
does he say if I continue to complain? and I cannot but continue to
complain, for it is not only moral, it is physical torment to see the
sight he makes of himself; he says: "My dear, you should not have married
an old man." What! I say to him, must an old man wear antiquated
trowsers? No! nothing will turn him; those are his habits. But, you
have not heard the worst. The sight of those hideous trowsers totally
destroying all shape in the man, is horrible enough; but it is absolutely
more than a woman can bear to see him--for he will shave--first cover his
face with white soap with that ridiculous centre-piece to his trowsers
reaching quite up to his poll, and then, you can fancy a woman's rage and
anguish! the figure lifts its nose by the extremist tip. Oh! it's
degradation! What respect can a woman have for her husband after that
sight? Imagine it! And I have implored him to spare me. It's useless.
You sneer at our hbops and say that you are inconvenienced by them but
you gentlemen are not degraded,--Oh! unutterably!--as I am every morning
of my life by that cruel spectacle of a husband.'

I have but faintly sketched Mrs. Romer's style. Evelina, who is prudish