ifferent matters which
do not touch the credit and respectability of the family, he is just as
much bound sometimes to give up his own will and way for the comfort of
his wife as she is in certain other matters to submit to his decisions.
In a large number of cases the husband and wife stand as equal human
beings before God, and the indulgence of unchecked and inconsiderate
self-will on either side is a sin.

It is my serious belief that writings such as we have been considering
do harm both to men and women, by insensibly inspiring in the one an
idea of a licensed prerogative of selfishness and self-will, and in the
other an irrational and indiscreet servility.

Is it any benefit to a man to find in the wife of his bosom the
flatterer of his egotism, the acquiescent victim of his little selfish
exactions, to be nursed and petted and cajoled in all his faults and
fault-findings, and to see everybody falling prostrate before his will
in the domestic circle? Is this the true way to make him a manly and
Christ-like man? It is my belief that many so-called good wives have
been accessory to making their husbands very bad Christians.

However, then, the little questions of difference in every-day life are
to be disposed of between two individuals, it is in the worst possible
taste and policy to undertake to settle them by mere authority. All
romance, all poetry, all beauty are over forever with a couple between
whom the struggle of mere authority has begun. No, there is no way out
of difficulties of this description but by the application, on both
sides, of good sense and religion to the little differences of life.

A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that
setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of
self-will, and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.

Everyman and every woman, in their self-training and self-culture,
should study the art of giving up with a good grace. The charm of polite
society is formed by that sort of freedom and facility in all the
members of a circle which makes each one pliable to the influences of
the others, and sympathetic to slide into the moods and tastes of others
without a jar.

In courteous and polished circles, there are no stiff railroad-tracks,
cutting straight through everything, and grating harsh thunders all
along their course, but smooth, meandering streams, tranquilly bending
hither and thither to every undulation of