I don't know how other men act on these occasions, but I find discretion the better part of valor, and submission the wisest expedient.
Usually it happens that my good wife works herself half to death--loses the even balance of her mind--and, in consequence, makes herself and all around her unhappy.

To indulge in an unamiable temper is by no means a common thing for Mrs.Sunderland, and this makes its occurrence on these occasions so much the harder to bear.
Our last house-cleaning took place in the fall.

I have been going to write a faithful history of what was said, done, and suffered on the occasion ever since, and now put my design into execution, even at the risk of having my head combed with a three-legged stool by my excellent wife, who, when she sees this in print, will be taken, in nautical phrase, all aback.

But, when a history of our own shortcomings, mishaps, mistakes, and misadventures will do others good, I am for giving the history and pocketing the odium, if there be such a thing as odium attached to revelations of human weakness and error.
"We must clean house this week," said my good wife one morning as we sat at the breakfast-table--"every thing is in a dreadful condition.
I can't look at nor touch any thing without feeling my flesh creep." I turned my eyes, involuntarily, around the room.

I was not, before, aware of the filthy state in which we were living.