And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing themselves, or indeed
doing anything at all except dusting the drawing-rooms, cleaning the
boots and shoes, cooking the parlour dinner, waiting generally on the
family, and making the beds.
But BLAKE even went further than that, and said that people should do
their own works of necessity, and not delegate them to persons in a
menial situation,
So he wouldn't allow his servants to do so much as even answer a bell.
Here he is making his wife carry up the water for her bath to the
second floor, much against her inclination,--
And why in the world the gentleman who illustrates these ballads has
put him in a cocked hat is more than I can tell.

After about three months of this sort of thing, taking the smooth with
the rough of it,
(Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes was not her notion
of connubial bliss),
MRS. BLAKE began to find that she had pretty nearly had enough of it,
And came, in course of time, to think that BLAKE'S own original line of
conduct wasn't so much amiss.

And now that wicked person--that detestable sinner ("BELIAL BLAKE" his
friends and well-wishers call him for his atrocities),
And his poor deluded victim, whom all her Christian brothers dislike
and pity so,
Go to the parish church only on Sunday morning and afternoon and
occasionally on a week-day, and spend their evenings in connubial
fondlings and affectionate reciprocities,
And I should like to know where in the world (or rather, out of it)
they expect to go!