to take to one's self a pretty little wife, fresh in heart and pure in
mind, and to condemn one's self to saw wood for the rest of one's days,
were one and the same thing.

Well, my dear sisters, have you any knowledge of those who have painted
the picture in these gloomy colors and described as a punishment that
which should be a reward? They are the husbands with a past and having
rheumatism. Being weary and--how shall I put it?--men of the world, they
choose to represent marriage as an asylum, of which you are to be the
angels. No doubt to be an angel is very nice, but, believe me, it is
either too much or too little. Do not seek to soar so high all at once,
but, instead, enter on a short apprenticeship. It will be time enough to
don the crown of glory when you have no longer hair enough to dress in
any other fashion.

But, O husbands with a past! do you really believe that your own angelic
quietude and the studied austerity of your principles are taken for
anything else than what they really mean--exhaustion?

You wish to rest; well and good; but it is wrong in you to wish
everybody else about you to rest too; to ask for withered trees and
faded grass in May, the lamps turned down and the lamp-shades doubled;
to require one to put water in the soup and to refuse one's self a
glass of claret; to look for virtuous wives to be highly respectable
and somewhat wearisome beings; dressing neatly, but having had neither
poetry, youth, gayety, nor vague desires; ignorant of everything,
undesirous of learning anything; helpless, thanks to the weighty virtues
with which you have crammed them; above all, to ask of these poor
creatures to bless your wisdom, caress your bald forehead, and blush
with shame at the echo of a kiss.

The deuce! but that is a pretty state of things for marriage to come to.

Delightful institution! How far are your sons, who are now
five-and-twenty years of age, in the right in being afraid of it! Have
they not a right to say to you, twirling their moustaches:

"But, my dear father, wait a bit; I am not quite ripe for it!"

"Yes; but it is a splendid match, and the young lady is charming."

"No doubt, but I feel that I should not make her happy. I am not old
enough--indeed, I am not."

And when the young man is seasoned for it, how happy she will be, poor
little thing!--a ripe husband, ready to fall from the tree, fit to be
put away in the apple-loft! What happiness! a good husband, who the d