e a certain kind of admiration and
love. Her wish will be law within a certain very limited sphere; but
beyond that he will not take her into his counsels and confidence. A
woman must make herself obvious to her husband, or he will drift out
beyond her horizon. She will be to him very nearly what she wills and
works to be. If she adapts herself to her children and does not adapt
herself to her husband, he will fall into the arrangement, and the two
will fall apart. I do not mean that they will quarrel, but they will
lead separate lives. They will be no longer husband and wife. There will
be a domestic alliance, but no marriage. A predominant interest in
the same objects binds them together after a fashion; but marriage is
something beyond that. If a woman wishes and purposes to be the friend
of her husband,--if she would be valuable to him, not simply as the
nurse of his children and the directress of his household, but as a
woman fresh and fair and fascinating, to him intrinsically lovely and
attractive, she should make an effort for it. It is not by any means
a thing that comes of itself, or that can be left to itself. She must
read, and observe, and think, and rest up to it. Men, as a general
thing, will not tell you so. They talk about having the slippers ready,
and enjoin women to be domestic. But men are blockheads,--dear, and
affectionate, and generous blockheads,--benevolent, large-hearted, and
chivalrous,--kind, and patient, and hard-working,--but stupid where
women are concerned. Indispensable and delightful as they are in real
life, pleasant and comfortable as women actually find them, not one in
ten thousand but makes a dunce of himself the moment he opens his mouth
to theorize about women. Besides, they have an axe to grind. The
pretty things they inculcate--slippers, and coffee, and care, and
courtesy--ought indeed to be done, but the others ought not to be left
undone. And to the former women seldom need to be exhorted. They take to
them naturally. A great many more women bore boorish husbands with
fond little attentions than wound appreciative ones by neglect. Women
domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is cultivation.
They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic
life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche,
and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those
duties shall spread and occupy the whole space.

This mistake is