exercised once in a life time,--and that once having the effect of a
hundred repetitions, as Job lectured his wife. And Job's wife, a
certain Mohammedan writer delivers, having committed a fault in her
love to her husband, he swore that on his recovery he would deal her
a hundred stripes. Job got well, and his heart was touched and
taught by the tenderness to keep his vow, and still to chastise his
help-mate; for he smote her once with a palm-branch having a hundred
leaves.

DOUGLAS JERROLD.



INTRODUCTION



Poor Job Caudle was one of the few men whom Nature, in her casual
bounty to women, sends into the world as patient listeners. He was,
perhaps, in more respects than one, all ears. And these ears, Mrs.
Caudle--his lawful, wedded wife as she would ever and anon impress
upon him, for she was not a woman to wear chains without shaking
them--took whole and sole possession of. They were her entire
property; as expressly made to convey to Caudle's brain the stream of
wisdom that continually flowed from the lips of his wife, as was the
tin funnel through which Mrs. Caudle in vintage time bottled her
elder wine. There was, however, this difference between the wisdom
and the wine. The wine was always sugared: the wisdom, never. It
was expressed crude from the heart of Mrs. Caudle; who, doubtless,
trusted to the sweetness of her husband's disposition to make it