Neither husband
nor wife was capable of _screwing_. Had the latter been, certainly
the free-handedness of the former would have driven her to it; but while
Mrs. Raymount would go without a new bonnet till an outcry arose in the
family that its respectability was in danger, she could not offer two
shillings a day to a sempstress who thought herself worth half-a-crown;
she could not allow a dish to be set on her table which was not as
likely to encourage hunger as allay it; neither because some richer
neighbors gave so little, would she take to herself the spiritual fare
provided in church without making a liberal acknowledgment in carnal
things. The result of this way of life was the deplorable one that Mr.
Raymount was compelled to rouse himself, and, from the chair of a
somewhat self-indulgent reader of many books, betake himself to his
study-table, to prove whether it were not possible for him to become the
writer of such as might add to an income showing scantier every quarter.
Here we may see the natural punishment of liberal habits; for this man
indulging in them, and, instead of checking them in his wife, loving her
the more that she indulged in them also, was for this reason condemned
to labor--the worst evil of life in the judgment of both the man about
Mayfair and the tramp of the casual ward.
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