be as
thoughtful, as courteous, as careful as ever; you should endeavor
really to be all that you have tried or appeared to be during these
days of courtship. You will be none too perfect even then.

Once, in talking to a group of women, I asserted that a wife should
exact of her husband as high a tone of morality as of her lover, that
she should not allow him to become lax in his conversation with her
any more than with any other woman. One woman thought me too strict.
She said men liked to feel that at home they could do as they pleased,
and would resent a wife's interference with their right to be loose in
their talk in their own home. I replied that the home is not the man's
nor the woman's alone; it is theirs jointly; that each has a right to
demand that the other shall not pollute or poison the air, the food,
the water or the moral atmosphere; and the wife who allows
contamination of the thought-atmosphere of the home is as culpable as
if she were to permit poison to be put into the food.

As a man admires the girl who respects herself too much to permit him
to tell her questionable stories, so will he reverence the wife who
refuses to allow him to degrade himself in her presence either by
speech or conduct. Love would not so often fail if wives knew the
secret of retaining it, and that is not by sacrifice of principle, nor
by tearful reproaches and upbraidings, but by being true to the
highest impulses, and while having the good common sense that can make
all reasonable allowance for fallibility, still permits no lowering of
moral standards, no willful falling short of the very best.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE WEDDING.

Said my friend:

There's to be a grand wedding, you know,
With no end to the fuss and parade,
With sixteen fair bridesmaids to stand in a row,
With sixteen young groomsmen to help out the show,
One to stand by the side of each maid.

Then there's a reception to be very fine,
With all sorts of magnificent things,
With silver to glitter and mirrors to shine,
With tropical fruit and famous old wine,
With odorous flowers and music divine,
Drawn forth from melodious strings.

In the minds of many girls the wedding means only this public show,
the display of elegant toilets, the reception of costly gifts; and the
preparation of marriage means too often merely the making of an
elegant _trousseau_. People generally do not ask concerning the
fit