My candour obliges me to confess that this is the mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious assumption of the Petruchian paterfamilias--the head of the family--boding, not perhaps "peace and love, and quiet life," but certainly "awful rule and right supremacy." For example:-- "My dear Jane, I wish you would just put by that everlasting crochet, and listen to me for a few moments," etc.

"My dear Jane, I wish you would understand me for once; don't think I am angry,--no, but I am hurt! You must consider," etc.
"My dear Jane, I don't know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for their husband's property," etc.
"My dear Jane, I wish you to understand that I am the last person in the world to be jealous; but I'll be d---d if that puppy, Captain Prettyman," etc.
Now, few so carefully cultivate the connubial garden, as to feel much surprise at the occasional sting of a homely nettle or two; but who ever expected, before entering that garden, to find himself pricked and lacerated by an insidious exotical "dear," which he had been taught to believe only lived in a hothouse, along with myrtles and other tender and sensitive shrubs which poets appropriate to Venus?
Nevertheless Parson Dale, being a patient man, and a pattern to all husbands, would have found no fault with his garden, though there had not been a single specimen of "dear,"-- whether the dear humilis or the dear superba; the dear pallida, rubra, or nigra; the dear suavis or the dear horrida,--no, not a single "dear" in the whole horticulture of matrimony, which Mrs.
Dale had not brought to perfection.

But this was far from being the case; Mrs.Dale, living much in retirement, was unaware of the modern improvements, in variety of colour and sharpness of prickle, which have rewarded the persevering skill of our female florists..