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ballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to the dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool. XLVI. Each night ought to have its _menu_. XLVII. Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours everything, that is, familiarity. XLVIII. If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of two consecutive nights, he has married too early. XLIX. It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time. L. A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to awaken. LI. The man who enters his wife's dressing-room is either a philosopher or an imbecile. LII. The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man. LIII. The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a throne. LIV. A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making her happy unless he sees her often at his knees. It is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions of snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men that Sterne addressed, in _Tristram Shandy_, the letter written by Walter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry the widow Wadman. These celebrated instructions which the most original of English writers has comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptions to complete our observations on the manner in which husbands should behave to their wives; and we offer it in its original form to the reflections of the predestined, begging that they will meditate upon it as one of the most solid masterpieces of human wit. "MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY, "What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee--tho' not so well for me--that thou hast occasion for a letter of instructions upon that head, and that I am a
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