, though his ardor may abate, but to retain at
least that general civility towards his own lady which he is so willing
to pay to every other, and not show a wife of eighteen or twenty years
old, that every man in company can treat her with more complaisance than
he, who so often vowed to her eternal fondness.

It is not my opinion that a young woman should be indulged in every wild
wish of her gay heart or giddy head; but contradiction may be softened
by domestic kindness, and quiet pleasures substituted in the place of
noisy ones. Public amusements are not indeed so expensive as is
sometimes imagined, but they tend to alienate the minds of married
people from each other. A well chosen society of friends and
acquaintance, more eminent for virtue and good sense than for gaiety and
splendor, where the conversation of the day may afford comment for the
evening, seems the most rational pleasure this great town can afford.

That your own superiority should always be seen, but never felt, seems
an excellent general rule. A wife should outshine her husband in
nothing, not even in her dress. The bane of married happiness among the
city men in general has been, that finding themselves unfit for polite
life, they transferred their vanity to their ladies, dressed them up
gaily, and sent them out a gallanting, while the good man was to regale
with port wine or rum punch, perhaps among mean companions, after the
compting house was shut. This practice produced the ridicule thrown on
them in all our comedies and novels since commerce began to prosper. But
now that I am so near the subject, a word or two on jealousy may not be
amiss; for though not a failing of the present age's growth, yet the
seeds of it are too certainly sown in every warm bosom, for us to
neglect it as a fault of no consequence. If you are ever tempted to be
jealous, watch your wife narrowly--but never tease her; tell her your
jealousy but conceal your suspicion; let her, in short, be satisfied
that it is only your odd temper, and even troublesome attachment, that
makes you follow her; but let her not dream that you ever doubted
seriously of her virtue even for a moment. If she is disposed towards
jealousy of you, let me beseech you to be always explicit with her and
never mysterious: be above delighting in her pain, of all things--nor do
your business nor pay your visits with an air of concealment, when all
you are doing might as well be proclaimed perhaps in the