e; the man will be more of woman,
she of man. Whether society, as it is at present constituted, fits our
young women to be the good wives they should be is another question. In
lower middle life, and with the working classes, it is asserted that the
women are not sufficiently taught to fulfill their mission properly;
but, if in large towns the exigencies of trade use up a large portion of
the female population, it is no wonder that they can not be at the same
time good mill-hands, bookbinders, shopwomen, and mothers, cooks, and
housewives. We may well have recourse to public cookery, and talk about
working men's dinners--thus drifting from an opposite point into the
coming socialism--when we absorb all the home energies of the woman in
gaining money sufficient for her daily bread. Yet these revelations, nor
those yet more dreadful ones which come out daily in some of our law
courts, are not sufficient to make us overlook the fact that with us by
far the larger portion of marriages are happy ones, and that of men's
wives we still can write as the most eloquent divine who ever lived,
Jeremy Taylor, wrote, "A good wife is Heaven's last, best gift to
man--his angel and minister of graces innumerable--his gem of many
virtues--his casket of jewels. Her voice is sweet music--her smiles his
brightest day--her kiss the guardian of his innocence--her arms the pale
of his safety, the balm of his health, the balsam of his life--her
industry his surest wealth--her economy his safest steward--her lips his
faithful counselors--her bosom the softest pillow of his cares--and her
prayers the ablest advocate of Heaven's blessings on his head."

* * * * *

XVI.

WOMEN'S HUSBANDS.

WHAT THE "BREAD WINNERS" LIKE IN THEIR WIVES--A LITTLE CONSTITUTIONAL
OPPOSITION.

It would not be holding the balance of the sexes fairly, if after saying
all that can be said in favor of men's wives, we did not say something
on the side of women's husbands. In these clever days the husband is a
rather neglected animal. Women are anxious enough to secure a specimen
of the creature, but he is very soon "shelved" afterwards; and women
writers are now so much occupied in contemplating the beauties of their
own more impulsive sex that they neglect to paint ideals of good
husbands. There has been also too much writing tending to separate the
sexes. It is plain that in actual life all the virtues can not be on one
side, a