If these beings, so closely allied to his wife, and so justly dear to her, may be considered as drawbacks to Maine's happiness, what man is there that has not some things in life to complain of? And when I first knew Mr. Maine, no man seemed more comfortable than he. His cottage was a picture of elegance and comfort; his table and cellar were excellently and neatly supplied. There was every enjoyment, but no ostentation. The omnibus took him to business of a morning; the boat brought him back to the happiest of homes, where he would while away the long evenings by reading out the fashionable novels to the ladies as they worked; or accompany his wife on the flute (which he played elegantly); or in any one of the hundred pleasing and innocent amusements of the domestic circle. Mrs. Chuff covered the drawing-rooms with prodigious tapestries, the work of her hands. Mrs. Sackville had a particular genius for making covers of tape or network for these tapestried cushions. She could make home-made wines. She could make preserves and pickles. She had an album, into which, during the time of his courtship, Sackville Maine bad written choice scraps of Byron's and Moore's poetry, analogous to his own situation, and in a fine mercantile hand. She had a large manuscript receipt-book--every quality, in a word, which indicated a virtuous and well-bred English female mind.
'And as for Nelson Collingwood,' Sackville would say, laughing, 'we couldn't do without him in the house. If he didn't spoil the tapestry we should be 'over-cushioned in a few months; and whom could we get but him to drink Laura's home-made wine?' The truth is, the gents who came from the City to dine at the 'Oval' could not be induced to drink it--in which fastidiousness, I myself, when I grew to be intimate with the family, confess that I shared.
'And yet, sir, that green ginger has been drunk by some of England's proudest heroes,' Mrs. Chuff would exclaim. 'Admiral Lord Exmouth tasted and praised it, sir, on board Captain Chuff's ship, the "Nebuchadnezzar," 74, at Algiers; and he had three dozen with turn in the "Pitchfork" frigate, a part of which was served out to the men before he went into his immortal action with the "Furibonde," Captain Choufleur, in the Gulf of Panama.'