 Henpecked , far sighted bank teller and avid bookworm Henry Bemis ( Meredith ) works at his window in a bank , while reading David Copperfield , which causes him to shortchange an annoyed customer . Bemis 's angry boss ( Taylor ) , and later his nagging wife ( deWit ) , both complain to him that he wastes far too much time reading " doggerel " . As a cruel joke , his wife asks him to read poetry from one of his books to her ; he eagerly obliges , only to find that she has inked over the text on every page , obscuring the words . Seconds later , she destroys the book by ripping the pages from it much to Henry 's dismay . 
