AMENITIES OP MARRIED LIFE.

Observer, Volume 4, Issue 94, 1 July 1882, Page 243

AMENITIES OP MARRIED LIFE.

Mr James Burton Turner, a native of Auckland, but now a resident at Nai Vali Yali, Rewa River, Fiji, sends us a somewhat peculiar epistle. Mr Turner's fine sensibility and aesthetic instincts have been rudely shocked. and scandalised by the contents of a letter written by a resident in one of the suburbs of Auckland to his brother in Fiji. Mr Turner says, " I feel ashame.d that a countryman of mine should so lower and degrade himself as to write in such a manner of the wife he has sworn to love, honour, and cherish ; and besides, I am married to a lady who has been many years in Fiji, though also a native of Auckland, so that I think a little publicity of this gentleman's (?) love letter would do him no harm. Reference is made at the commencement to the gentleman's brother's engagement with, a young lady, and who, for_,some "unexplained reason, is supposed to have broken off the engagement. She also had lived some considerable time in Fiji." . : «$-.

The extract which Mr Turner sends is as follows : — " Did the gal give you the sack ? If she did,^it was nothing more than what I expected all along.. Take . jny fate as a -warning. I don't believe any woniairtliat has been there for awhile is fit for anyone to ma^ry-tujjess they kept them there all their lives. lam alwsy»ojpwing away. If I am chums for a few days there issßta^ to be ; a bust tip, Whenever she kicks up a row ndw,, I turn .sulky -fob? a few daysiand-won't speak to'he'iv. It brings,, her *™-iTjA~rm™fcf; r „' tlmn npything." s

is then made in terms of the coarsest ■vulgarity,- which we will not inflict on our readers, f to an expected interesting event in the writers domestic circle, and he goes on to say, " That is all that keeps her. here, or she would have left me long ago, and I should have been very glad." -^ : —

It is this which has harrowed the refined soul of Mr James Burton .Turner. If the writer of the letter from which the above extract is taken ever pays a visit to Fiji, and is recognised by the women, we shall be ready to give long odds that he will soon want a wig, if something more serious do not happen to him than the loss of his hair | and whiskers. As to the novel plan which he I adopts for adjusting family jars, it is by no means j original, though we believe it is more frequently employed by the opposite sex. j • . — <&-