MRS. BULLFROG.

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It makes me melancholy to see how like fools
some very sensible people act, in the matter of choosing
wives. They perplex their judgments by a most
undue attention to little niceties of personal appearance,
habits, disposition, and other trifles, which
concern nobody but the lady herself. An unhappy
gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of perfection,
keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and
withered, that no tolerable woman will accept them.
Now, this is the very height of absurdity. A kind
Providence has so skilfully adapted sex to sex, and
the mass of individuals to each other, that, with certain
obvious exceptions, any male and female may be
moderately happy in the married state. The true rule

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is, to ascertain that the match is fundamentally a good
one, and then to take it for granted that all minor objections,
should there be such, will vanish, if you let
them alone. Only put yourself beyond hazard, as to
the real basis of matrimonial bliss, and it is scarcely
to be imagined what miracles, in the way of reconciling
smaller incongruities, connubial love will effect.

For my own part, I freely confess, that, in my
bachelorship, I was precisely such an over-curious
simpleton, as I now advise the reader not to be. My
early habits had gifted me with a feminine sensibility,
and too exquisite refinement. I was the accomplished
graduate of a dry-goods store, where, by dint
of ministering to the whims of fine ladies, and suiting
silken hose to delicate limbs, and handling satins,
ribbons, chintzes, calicoes, tapes, gauze, and cambric
needles, I grew up a very lady-like sort of a gentleman.
It is not assuming too much, to affirm, that
the ladies themselves were hardly so lady-like as
Thomas Bullfrog. So painfully acute was my sense
of female imperfection, and such varied excellence did
I require in the woman whom I could love, that there
was an awful risk of my getting no wife at all, or of
being driven to perpetrate matrimony with my own
image in the looking-glass. Besides the fundamental
principle already hinted at, I demanded the fresh
bloom of youth, pearly teeth, glossy ringlets, and the
whole list of lovely items, with the utmost delicacy of
habits and sentiments, a silken texture of mind, and,
above all, a virgin heart. In a word, if a young angel,
just from Paradise, yet dressed in earthly fashion, had
come and offered me her hand, it is by no means certain
that I should have taken it. There was every
chance of my becoming a most miserable old bachelor,
when, by the best luck in the world, I made a
journey into another state, and was smitten by, and

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smote again, and wooed, won, and married the present
Mrs. Bullfrog, all in the space of a fortnight. Owing
to these extempore measures, I not only gave my
bride credit for certain perfections, which have not as
yet come to light, but also overlooked a few trifling
defects, which, however, glimmered on my perception
long before the close of the honey-moon. Yet, as
there was no mistake about the fundamental principle
aforesaid, I soon learned, as will be seen, to estimate
Mrs. Bullfrog's deficiencies and superfluities at exactly
their proper value.

The same morning that Mrs. Bullfrog and I came
together as a unit, we took two seats in the stage-coach,
and began our journey towards my place of
business. There being no other passengers, we were
as much alone, and as free to give vent to our raptures,
as if I had hired a hack for the matrimonial
jaunt. My bride looked charmingly, in a green silk
calash, and riding-habit of pelisse cloth, and whenever
her red lips parted with a smile, each tooth appeared
like an inestimable pearl. Such was my passionate
warmth, that—we had rattled out of the village, gentle
reader, and were lonely as Adam and Eve in Paradise—
I plead guilty to no less freedom than a kiss!
The gentle eye of Mrs. Bullfrog scarcely rebuked
me for the profanation. Imboldened by her indulgence,
I threw back the calash from her polished
brow, and suffered my fingers, white and delicate as
her own, to stray among those dark and glossy curls,
which realized my day-dreams of rich hair.

“My love,” said Mrs. Bullfrog, tenderly, “you will
disarrange my curls.”

“O no, my sweet Laura!” replied I, still playing
with the glossy ringlet. “Even your fair hand could
not manage a curl more delicately than mine.—I
propose myself the pleasure of doing up your hair in

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papers, every evening, at the same time with my
own.”

“Mr. Bullfrog,” repeated she, “you must not disarrange
my curls.”

This was spoken in a more decided tone than I
had happened to hear, until then, from my gentlest
of all gentle brides. At the same time, she put up
her hand and took mine prisoner, but merely drew it
away from the forbidden ringlet, and then immediately
released it. Now, I am a fidgetty little man, and
always love to have something in my fingers; so that,
being debarred from my wife's curls, I looked about
me for any other plaything. On the front seat of the
coach, there was one of those small baskets in which
travelling ladies, who are too delicate to appear at a
public table, generally carry a supply of gingerbread,
biscuits and cheese, cold ham, and other light refreshments,
merely to sustain nature to the journey's end.
Such airy diet will sometimes keep them in pretty
good flesh for a week together. Laying hold of this
same little basket, I thrust my hand under the newspaper,
with which it was carefully covered.

“What's this, my dear?” cried I; for the black
neck of a bottle had popped out of the basket.

“A bottle of Kalydor, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife,
coolly taking the basket from my hands, and replacing
it on the front seat.

There was no possibility of doubting my wife's
word; but I never knew genuine Kalydor, such as I
use for my own complexion, to smell so much like
cherry-brandy. I was about to express my fears that
the lotion would injure her skin, when an accident
occurred, which threatened more than a skin-deep
injury. Our Jehu had carelessly driven over a heap
of gravel, and fairly capsized the coach, with the
wheels in the air, and our heels where our heads

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should have been. What became of my wits, I cannot
imagine; they have always had a perverse trick
of deserting me, just when they were most needed;
but so it chanced, that, in the confusion of our overthrow,
I quite forgot that there was a Mrs. Bullfrog
in the world. Like many men's wives, the good
lady served her husband as a stepping-stone. I had
scrambled out of the coach, and was instinctively
settling my cravat, when somebody brushed roughly
by me, and I heard a smart thwack upon the coachman's
ear.

“Take that, you villain!” cried a strange, hoarse
voice. “You have ruined me, you blackguard! I
shall never be the woman I have been!”

And then came a second thwack, aimed at the
driver's other ear, but which missed it, and hit him
on the nose, causing a terrible effusion of blood.
Now, who, or what fearful apparition, was inflicting
this punishment on the poor fellow, remained an impenetrable
mystery to me. The blows were given by
a person of grisly aspect, with a head almost bald,
and sunken cheeks, apparently of the feminine gender,
though hardly to be classed in the gentler sex.
There being no teeth to modulate the voice, it had a
mumbled fierceness, not passionate, but stern, which
absolutely made me quiver like a calves-foot jelly.
Who could the phantom be! The most awful circumstance
of the affair is yet to be told; for this ogre, or
whatever it was, had a riding-habit like Mrs. Bullfrog's,
and also a green silk calash, dangling down
her back by the strings. In my terror and turmoil
of mind, I could imagine nothing less, than that the
Old Nick, at the moment of our overturn, had annihilated
my wife and jumped into her petticoats. This
idea seemed the more probable, since I could nowhere
perceive Mrs. Bullfrog alive, nor, though I looked

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very sharp about the coach, could I detect any traces
of that beloved woman's dead body. There would
have been a comfort in giving her Christian burial!

“Come, sir, bestir yourself! Help this rascal to
set up the coach,” said the hobgoblin to me; then,
with a terrific screech to three countrymen at a distance—
“Here, you fellows, an't you ashamed to
stand off, when a poor woman is in distress?”

The countrymen, instead of fleeing for their lives,
came running at full speed, and laid hold of the topsyturvy
coach. I, also, though a small-sized man, went
to work like a son of Anak. The coachman, too,
with the blood still streaming from his nose, tugged
and toiled most manfully, dreading, doubtless, that
the next blow might break his head. And yet, bemauled
as the poor fellow had been, he seemed to
glance at me with an eye of pity, as if my case were
more deplorable than his. But I cherished a hope
that all would turn out a dream, and seized the opportunity,
as we raised the coach, to jam two of my
fingers under the wheel, trusting that the pain would
awaken me.

“Why, here we are all to rights again!” exclaimed
a sweet voice, behind. “Thank you for your assistance,
gentlemen. My dear Mr. Bullfrog, how you
perspire! Do let me wipe your face. Don't take
this little accident too much to heart, good driver.
We ought to be thankful that none of our necks are
broke!”

“We might have spared one neck out of the three,”
muttered the driver, rubbing his ear and pulling his
nose, to ascertain whether he had been cuffed or not.—
“Why, the woman's a witch!”

I fear that the reader will not believe, yet it is positively
a fact, that there stood Mrs. Bullfrog, with her
glossy ringlets curling on her brow, and two rows of

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Orient pearls gleaming between her parted lips, which
wore a most angelic smile. She had regained her
riding-habit and calash from the grisly phantom, and
was, in all respects, the lovely woman who had been
sitting by my side, at the instant of our overturn.
How she had happened to disappear, and who had
supplied her place, and whence did she now return,
were problems too knotty for me to solve. There
stood my wife. That was the one thing certain among
a heap of mysteries. Nothing remained but to help
her into the coach, and plod on, through the journey
of the day, and the journey of life, as comfortably as
we could. As the driver closed the door upon us, I
heard him whisper to the three countrymen—

“How do you suppose a fellow feels, shut up in the
cage with a she-tiger?”

Of course, this query could have no reference to
my situation. Yet, unreasonable as it may appear,
I confess that my feelings were not altogether so
ecstatic, as when I first called Mrs. Bullfrog mine.
True, she was a sweet woman, and an angel of a
wife; but what if a Gorgon should return, amid the
transports of our connubial bliss, and take the angel's
place! I recollected the tale of a fairy, who half the
time was a beautiful woman, and half the time a
hideous monster. Had I taken that very fairy to
be the wife of my bosom? While such whims and
chimeras were flitting across my fancy, I began to
look askance at Mrs. Bullfrog, almost expecting that
the transformation would be wrought before my
eyes.

To divert my mind, I took up the newspaper which
had covered the little basket of refreshments, and
which now lay at the bottom of the coach, blushing
with a deep-red stain, and emitting a potent spirituous
fume, from the contents of the broken bottle of

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Kalydor. The paper was two or three years old, but contained
an article of several columns, in which I soon
grew wonderfully interested. It was the report of a
trial for breach of promise of marriage, giving the
testimony in full, with fervid extracts from both the
gentleman's and lady's amatory correspondence. The
deserted damsel had personally appeared in court, and
had borne energetic evidence to her lover's perfidy,
and the strength of her blighted affections.—On the
defendant's part, there had been an attempt, though
insufficiently sustained, to blast the plaintiff's character,
and a plea in mitigation of damages, on account
of her unamiable temper. A horrible idea was suggested
by the lady's name.

“Madam,” said I, holding the newspaper before
Mrs. Bullfrog's eyes—and, though a small, delicate,
and thin-visaged man, I feel assured that I looked
very terrific—“Madam,” repeated I, through my
shut teeth, “were you the plaintiff in this cause?”

“O, my dear Mr. Bullfrog,” replied my wife, sweetly,
“I thought all the world knew that!”

“Horror! horror!” exclaimed I, sinking back on
the seat.

Covering my face with both hands, I emitted a deep
and deathlike groan, as if my tormented soul were
rending me asunder. I, the most exquisitely fastidious
of men, and whose wife was to have been the
most delicate and refined of women, with all the fresh
dew-drops glittering on her virgin rosebud of a heart!
I thought of the glossy ringlets and pearly teeth—I
thought of the Kalydor—I thought of the coachman's
bruised ear and bloody nose—I thought of the
tender love-secrets, which she had whispered to the
judge and jury, and a thousand tittering auditors—
and gave another groan!

“Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife.

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As I made no reply, she gently took my hands
within her own, removed them from my face, and
fixed her eyes steadfastly on mine.

“Mr. Bullfrog,” said she, not unkindly, yet with
all the decision of her strong character, “let me advise
you to overcome this foolish weakness, and prove
yourself, to the best of your ability, as good a husband
as I will be a wife. You have discovered, perhaps,
some little imperfections in your bride. Well—what
did you expect? Women are not angels. If they
were, they would go to Heaven for husbands—or, at
least, be more difficult in their choice on earth.”

“But why conceal those imperfections?” interposed
I, tremulously.

“Now, my love, are not you a most unreasonable
little man?” said Mrs. Bullfrog, patting me on the
cheek. “Ought a woman to disclose her frailties
earlier than the wedding-day? Few husbands, I assure
you, make the discovery in such good season,
and still fewer complain that these trifles are concealed
too long. Well, what a strange man you are! Poh!
you are joking.”

“But the suit for breach of promise!” groaned I.

“Ah! and is that the rub?” exclaimed my wife.
“Is it possible that you view that affair in an objectionable
light? Mr. Bullfrog, I never could have
dreamt it! Is it an objection, that I have triumphantly
defended myself against slander, and vindicated
my purity in a court of justice? Or do you complain,
because your wife has shown the proper spirit
of a woman, and punished the villain who trifled with
her affections?”

“But,” persisted I—shrinking into a corner of
the coach, however; for I did not know precisely
how much contradiction the proper spirit of a woman
would endure—“but, my love, would it not have

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been more dignified to treat the villain with the silent
contempt he merited?”

“That is all very well, Mr. Bullfrog,” said my wife,
slyly; “but, in that case, where would have been the
five thousand dollars, which are to stock your dry-goods
store?”

“Mrs. Bullfrog, upon your honor,” demanded I, as
if my life hung upon her words, “is there no mistake
about those five thousand dollars?”

“Upon my word and honor, there is none,” replied
she. The jury gave me every cent the rascal had—
and I have kept it all for my dear Bullfrog!”

“Then, thou dear woman,” cried I, with an over-whelming
gush of tenderness, “let me fold thee to
my heart! The basis of matrimonial bliss is secure,
and all thy little defects and frailties are forgiven.
Nay, since the result has been so fortunate, I rejoice
at the wrongs which drove thee to this blessed law-suit.
Happy Bullfrog that I am!”