" First, consider the doleful shrew. This is a person not
usually found among the classes which lack leisure; she is an
exasperating and most entirely selfish woman, and she cannot very well
invent her refinements of whining cruelty unless she has a little time
on hand; her speciality is to moan incessantly over the ingratitude of
people for whom she has done some trivial service; and, as she always
moans by choice in presence of the person whom she has afflicted by
her generosity, the result is merely distracting. If the victim says,
"I allow that you have been very kind, and I am grateful," he commits
an error in tactics, for the torturer is upon him at once. "Oh, you do
own it then, and yet see how you behave!"--and then the torrent flows
on with swift persistence. If, on the contrary, the sufferer cries,
"Why on earth do you go on repeating what you have done? I owned your
kindness once, and I do not intend to talk any more about it!" he is
still more clearly delivered into the enemy's hands. He lays himself
open to a charge of ingratitude, and the charge is pressed home with
relentless fluency. Then, as to the doleful one's influence on
children--the general modern tendency is towards making children
happy, but the doleful one is a survival from some bad type, and takes
a secret malign delight in wantonly inflicting pain on the minds or
bodies of the young.
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