VII.

MARRIED AND UNSETTLED.

LOVE in a cottage was thoroughly enjoyed by Sheridan, while his young wife was delighted with her husband and her new home; both of them were happier at East Burnham than afterwards and elsewhere; indeed, they often sighed in the succeeding years, when both were famous, for a return of the golden hours in the morning of their wedded life.1 Though inexperienced housekeepers, they quickly accommodated themselves to their new position. Neither of them had anticipated becoming an exception to the rule that love flies out of the window when poverty comes in at the door. The chief problem which Sheridan had to solve was how to keep at a convenient distance the gaunt wolf in which gnawing hunger is symbolized. His means were

In a letter to her friend, Mrs. Stratford Canning, written on the 6th of August, 1782, Mrs. Sheridan says: "We visited our old house at East Burnham the other day, and I wished for you to keep me in countenance. I piped so pitifully at the sight of all my old haunts in the days of happiness, innocence and eighteen." My cordial thanks are due to Mr. A. J. Butler, the great-grandson of Mrs. Canning, for allowing me to make extracts from this letter and from others by Mrs. Sheridan.