a walking advertisement of a
flower-store!'--Observations of this kind between husbands and wives,
brothers and sisters, or intimate friends, do not indicate sincerity,
but obtuseness; and the person who remarks on the pimple on your nose is
in many cases just as apt to deceive you as the most accomplished
Frenchwoman who avoids disagreeable topics in your presence.

"Many families seem to think that it is a proof of family union and
good-nature that they can pick each other to pieces, joke on each
other's feelings and infirmities, and treat each other with a general
tally-ho-ing rudeness without any offence or ill-feeling. If there is a
limping sister, there is a never-failing supply of jokes on
'Dot-and-go-one'; and so with other defects and peculiarities of mind or
manners. Now the perfect good-nature and mutual confidence which allow
all this liberty are certainly admirable; but the liberty itself is far
from making home-life interesting or agreeable.

"Jokes upon personal or mental infirmities, and a general habit of
saying things in jest which would be the height of rudeness if said in
earnest, are all habits which take from the delicacy of family
affection.

"In all this rough playing with edge-tools many are hit and hurt who are
ashamed or afraid to complain. And after all, what possible good or
benefit it? Courage to say disagreeable things, when it is necessary to
say them for the highest good of the person addressed, is a sublime
quality; but a careless habit of saying them, in the mere freedom of
family intercourse, is certainly as great a spoiler of the domestic
vines as any fox running.

"There is one point under this head which I enlarge upon for the benefit
of my own sex: I mean table-criticisms. The conduct of housekeeping, in
the present state of domestic service, certainly requires great
allowance; and the habit of unceremonious comment on the cooking and
appointments of the table, in which some husbands habitually allow
themselves, is the most unpardonable form of domestic rudeness. If a
wife has philosophy enough not to mind it, so much the worse for her
husband, as it confirms him in an unseemly habit, embarrassing to guests
and a bad example to children. If she has no feelings that he is bound
to respect, he should at least respect decorum and good taste, and
confine the discussion of such matters to private intercourse, and not
initiate every guest and child into the grating and greasing of t