the staff of life.

"I like to believe that good-will, generally, is not wanting--only
time and attention. People live in a hurry, and can hardly be said
to live: they follow with a huntsman's eagerness this or that petty
object, and neglect what is important.

"You, man of business or study, who are so energetic and
indefatigable, you have no time, say you, to associate your wife
with your daily progress; you leave her to her _ennui_, idle
conversations, empty sermons, and silly books; so that, falling
below herself, less than woman, even less than a child, she will
have neither moral action, influence, nor maternal authority, over
her own offspring. Well! you will have the time, as old age
advances, to try in vain to do all over again what is not done
twice, to follow in the steps of a son, who, from college to the
schools, and from thence into the world, hardly knows his family;
and who, if he travels a little, and meets you on his return, will
ask you your name. The mother alone could have made you a son; but
to do so you ought to have made her what a woman ought to be,
strengthened her with your sentiments and ideas, and nourished her
with your life."

True, O most subtle and sapient Frenchman, the remedy lies in the
direction you have pointed out; but we have doubts if you have fully
discovered its nature, or are prepared to apply it in its necessary
extent. The husband must make the wife the companion of his heart and
thoughts, of his hopes and exertions. Too long has this sympathy and
confidence been unknown in France, where your women have been but the
toys and playthings of your lighter or looser hours, and where often to
their own husbands they have not even been so much. But, as you partly
see, this is not all that is needed to be corrected. In order to be the
fitting guide and guardian of the mother of his family, the husband must
share in those higher feelings which he seeks to regulate and reclaim.
You do not hope or wish to see your wife and children devoid of
religion. But if you would not surrender them to the guidance of others
in those momentous concerns, you must care for them and conduct their
course yourself, and must learn to travel the road along which they are
to be led. The husband must become himself the priest and the director:
not by inculcating a vague theism or a cold morality, but by
establishing in his hou