SELLING a WIFE.—On the 7th instant, one of those whimsical
sales, which arc not easily reconcileable to that English reverence for law of which we so often boast, took place at Lancaster. The man was a farmer in the neighbourhood ; the wife, a buxom, good-looking woman, of about twenty-two. They had been married in 1828 ; and having no children, and seldom agreeing with each other, they at length agreed to part. The Lancaster Herald puts the following speech into the month of the husband ; which, if genuine, is a curiosity in its way- " Gentlemen, I have to offer to your notice my wife, Mary Ann Thompson, otherwise Williamson, whom I mean to sell to the highest and fairest bidder. Gentlemen, it is her wish as well as mine to part for ever. She has been to me only a bosom serpent. I took her for my comfort, and the good of my house ; but she became my tormentor, a domestic curse, a night invasion, and a daily devil. Gentlemen. I speak truth from my heart, whim I say, may God deliver us from troublesome wives and frolicsome widows. Avoid them the same as you would a mad dog, a roaring lion, a loaded pistol, cholera zuorbui. Mount Etna. or any other pestilential phenomena in nature. I have shown you the dark side of my wifit, awl told you her faults and her failings ; I will new it.- Moduee the bright and sunny side of her, and explain her qualifications and goodness. She can rend novels and milk cows; she can laugh and weep with the same case that you iambi take a glass of ale when thirsty ; indeed, gentlemen, she reminds me of what the poet says of women in general-
' Heaven gave to women the peculiar grace, To laugh, to weep, and cheat the human race.'
She can make butter and scold the maid ; she can sing Moore's melodies, and plait her frills and caps ; she cannot make rum, gin, or whisky; but she is a good judge of the quality, from long experience in tasting them. I therefore t ter her, with all her per- fections and imperfections, for the sum of fifty shillings."
After an hour or two, the lady was purchased by a pensioner, for the sum of twenty shillings and a Newfoundland dog.
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