earing, and left his wife to amuse herself in any way she might please.
A literary husband is, without exception, although always at home, the
least domestic husband in the world, and must try the best of tempers,
not by unkindness, for my father was kind and indulgent to excess, but
by that state of perfect abstraction and indifference which he showed to
everything except the favourite pursuit which absorbed him. My mother
had but to speak, and every wish was granted--a refusal was unknown.
You may say, what could she want more; I reply, that anything to a woman
is preferable to indifference. The immediate consent to every wish took
away, in her opinion, all merit in the grant; the value of everything is
only relative, and in proportion to the difficulty of obtaining it. The
immediate assent to every opinion was tantamount to insult; it implied
that he did not choose to argue with her.

"It is true that women like to have their own way; but they like, at the
same time, to have difficulties to surmount and to conquer; otherwise,
half the gratification is lost. Although tempests are to be deplored,
still a certain degree of oscillation and motion are requisite to keep
fresh and clear the lake of matrimony, the waters of which otherwise
soon stagnate and become foul, and without some contrary currents of
opinion between a married couple such a stagnation must take place.

"A woman permitted always and invariably to have her own way without
control, is much in the same situation as the child who insists upon a
whole instead of half a holiday, and before the evening closes is tired
of himself and everything about him. In short, a little contradiction,
like salt at dinner, seasons and appetises the repast; but too much,
like the condiment in question, spoils the whole, and it becomes
unpalatable in proportion to its excess.

"My mother was a vain woman in every sense of the word--vain of her
birth and of her beauty, and accustomed to receive that homage to which
she considered herself entitled. She had been spoiled in her infancy,
and as she grew up had learned nothing, because she was permitted to do
as she pleased; she was therefore frivolous, and could not appreciate
what she could not comprehend. There never was a more ill-assorted
union."

"I have always thought that such must be the case," replied Gascoigne,
"in Catholic countries, where a young person is taken out of a convent
and mated according to what her