Domestic Faults

Homes are more often darkened by the continual recurrence of small faults, than by the actual presence of any decided vice. The Eastern traveler can combine his force and hunt down the tiger that prowls upon his path; but he can scarcely escape the mosquitoes that infest the air he breathes, or the fleas that swarm the ground he treads. The drunkard has been known to renounce his darling vice; the slave to dress and extravagance her besetting sin; but the waspish temper, the irritating tone, rude, dogmatic manners, and the hundred nameless negligences that spoil the beauty of association, have rarely done other than proceed till the action of disgust and gradual alienation has turned all the currents of affection from their course, leaving nothing but a barren track over which the mere skeleton of companionship stalks along.--Anon