If I had had my way, I would have drummed the preachers out of the town.

Mary and Mrs.Wade and one or two others were about the only women who escaped the epidemic.
Seriously, it led to a good deal of domestic misery.

Poor Tomkins's wife drove him to such a pass by her scandalous neglect of the house, that one morning he locked her into her bedroom, and there he kept her on very plain diet for three days.

We thought of getting up a meeting to render public thanks to Tomkins, and to give him some little testimonial." Denzil uttered roars of laughter; the story was exactly of the kind that made appeal to his humorous instincts.
"Has the ferment subsided ?" he asked.
"Tolerably well; leaving a good deal of froth and scum, however.

The worst of it was that, in the very week when those makebates had departed, there came down on us a second plague, in the shape of Mrs.
Hitchin, the apostle of--I don't quite know what, but she calls it Purity.