s ought not to be the gauge of a man's strength.

A pale chilly woman afflicted with chronic bronchitis, who wears furs
and velvets in May and fears the east wind as much as an East-Indian
fears a tiger, does her best to coddle her husband, father, and sons in
about the same ratio as she coddles herself. They must not go out
without an overcoat; they must be sure to take an umbrella if the day is
at all cloudy; they must not walk too far, nor ride too hard, and they
must be sure to be at home by a certain hour. When such women as these
have to do with men just on the boundary-line between the last days of
vigor and the first of old age, they put forward the time of old age by
many years. One sees their men rapidly sink into the softness and
incapacity of senility, when a more bracing life would have kept them
good for half-a-dozen years longer. But women do not care for this. They
like men to be their own companions more than they care for any manly
comradeship among each other; and most women--but not all--would rather
have their husbands manly in a womanly way than in a manly one, as being
more within the compass of their own sympathies and understanding.

The same kind of interference is very common where the husband is a man
of broad humor--one who calls a spade a spade, with no circumlocution
about an agricultural implement. The wife of such a man is generally one
of the ultra-refined kind, according to the odd law of compensation
which regulates so much of human action, and thinks herself obliged to
stand as the enduring censor of her husband's speech. As this is an
example most frequently to be found in middle life, and where there are
children belonging to the establishment, the word of warning is
generally "papa!"--said with reproach or resentment, according to
circumstances--which has, of course, the effect of drawing the attention
of the young people to the paternal breadth of speech, and of fixing
that special breach of decorum on their memory. Sometimes the wife has
sufficient self-restraint not to give the word of warning in public, but
can nurse her displeasure for a more convenient season; but as soon as
they are alone, the miserable man has to pass under the harrow, as only
husbands with wives of a chastising spirit can pass under it, and his
life is made a burden to him because of that unlucky anecdote told with
such verve a few hours ago, and received with such shouts of pleasant
laughter. Perhaps the