A Wife's Duty Author:Amelia Alderson Opie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3' to my mother. It was from Lord Charles, and was so like the man, that I shall transcribe it. " Madam, " I doubt not but you were amazed, and probably offended, at my quitting th... more »e house of your son-in-law without taking leave of you, as you are not a woman likely to think my silence at the moment of parting from you was to be attributed to the tender passion which I had conceived for your beauty and accomplishments. But, madam, if my silence was not attributable to love, so neither was it caused by hate ; and I beg leave, hat in hand, and on bended knee, to explain whence my conduct proceeded. In the first place, madam, you had given me a blow, a stunning blow; and after a man has been stunned, he does not soon recover himself sufficiently to know what he is about, and how he ought to behave. In the next place, I endeavoured to remember how the great Earl of Essex behaved when Queen Elizabeth gave him a blow, or in other words a box on the ear (for blow I need not tell a lady of your erudition is the textit{genus, and box on the ear the textit{species). Now that noble Earl did not return the blow (which I own I was very much inclined to do), but he departed in silence from her presence, I believe; and so / in imitation of textit{him from yours. Methinks I hear you exclaim ' The little lord is mad! I gave him no blow." Not with your hand, I own ; but with your tongue, ' that unruly member,' as St. James so justly calls it; you gave me a tingling blow on the cheekof my mind, which it still feels, and for which perhaps it may be the better. It is this consideration, and the belief that your motives were kind, though your treatment was rough, and that you only meant, like the bear in the fable, to guard me from a slight evil, though you broke my head in doing it; it is this belief, I say, that now thr...« less