ot only easy-going, but
unprincipled,--unprincipled, that is, rather in the sense of having
no particular principles of any kind than in that of possessing
and practising notoriously bad ones. He must have a fine contempt
for steady respectability, and an irresistible inclination to that
glittering style of untrammelled life which is believed by those who
live it to be the true Bohemianism. He should be weak in character,
he may be pleasant in manner and appearance, and he must be both poor
and extravagant. If to these qualities be added, first a wife, young,
good-looking, and in most respects similar to her husband, though of
a stronger will, and secondly a friend, rich, determined, strictly
unprincipled, and thoroughly unscrupulous, the conditions which
produce the Tolerated Husband may be said to be complete.

The Tolerated Husband may have been at one time an officer in a good
regiment. Having married, he finds that his pay, combined with a
moderate private income, and a generous allowance of indebtedness, due
to the gratification of expensive tastes, is insufficient to maintain
him in that position of comfort to which he conceives himself to be
entitled. He therefore abandons the career of arms, and becomes one of
those who attempt spasmodically to redeem commercial professions from
the taint of mere commercialism by becoming commercial themselves.
It is certain that the gilded society which turns up a moderately
aristocratic nose at trade and tradesmen, looks with complete
indulgence upon an ex-officer who dabbles in wine, or associates
himself with a new scheme for the easy manufacture of working-men's
boots. An agency to a Fire and Life Assurance Society is, of course,
above reproach, and the Stock Exchange, an institution which, in the
imagination of reckless fools, provides as large a cover as charity,
is positively enviable--a reputation which it owes to the fancied ease
with which half-a-crown is converted into one hundred thousand pounds
by the mere stroke of an office pen.

The Tolerated Husband tries all these methods, one after another, with
a painful monotony of failure in each. Yet, somehow or other, he still
keeps up appearances, and manages to live in a certain style not far
removed from luxury. He entertains his friends at elaborate dinners,
both at home and at expensive restaurants; he is a frequent visitor at
theatres, where he often pays for the stalls of many others as well as
for his own. He