w, the majority of men's wives in the
upper and middle classes fall far short of that which is required of a
good wife. They are the wives not made by love, but by the chance of a
good match. They are the products of worldly prudence, not of a noble
passion; and, although they may be very comfortable and very well clad,
though they may think themselves happy, and wear the very look of health
and beauty, they can never be to their husbands what a wife of true and
real tender love would be.

The consequence is that, after the first novelty has passed away, the
chain begins to rub and the collar to gall. "The girl who has married
for money," writes a clergyman, "has not by that rash and immoral act
blinded her eyes to other and nobler attractions. She may still love
wisdom, though the man of her choice may be a fool; she will none the
less desire gentle, chivalrous affection because he is purse-proud and
haughty; she may sigh for manly beauty all the more because he is coarse
and ugly; she will not be able to get rid of her own youth, and all it
longs for, by watching his silver hair." No; and, while there comes a
curse upon her union--whilst in the long, long evenings, in the cold
Spring mornings, and in the still Summer days, she feels that all worth
living for is gone, while she is surrounded by all her body wants--her
example is corrupting others. The scorned lover, who was rejected
because he was poor, goes away to curse woman's fickleness and to marry
some one whom he can not love; and the thoughtless girls, by whom the
glitter of fortune is taken for the real gold of happiness, follow the
venal example, and flirt and jilt till they fancy that they have secured
a good match.

Many women, after they have permanently attached a husband of this sort,
sit down, with all the heroism of martyrs, to try to love the man they
have accepted, but not chosen. They find it a hard, almost an impossible
task. Then comes the moment so bitterly predicted by Milton, who no
doubt drew from his own feeling and experience, when he put into the
mouths of our first parents the prophecy that either man should never
find the true partner of his choice, or that, having found her, she
should be in possession of another. This is far too often true, and can
not fail to be the source of a misery almost too bitter to be long
endured.

It says much for our Anglo-Saxon wives that their constancy has passed
into many proverbs. When a woman really