s more sorely than open
opposition. Some Johns make it a point of manly duty to discourage at
first hearing any plan that has originated with a woman. I am fond of
John, but this idiosyncrasy cannot be ignored. Nor is it entirely
explicable upon any principle known in feminine ethics, unless it be
intended by Providence as a counterweight to the womanly proclivity to
see but one side of a question when we are interested in carrying it
to a vote. John is as positive that there are two sides to everything,
as Columbus was that the Eastern Hemisphere must have something to
balance it. When Mary looks to him for instant assent and earnest
sympathy, he casts about for objections, and sets them in calm array.
She may have demonstrated in a thousand instances her ability to judge
and act for herself, and may preface her exposition of the case in
hand by saying that she has given it mature deliberation. It never
occurred to him until she mentioned it; he may have sincerest respect
for her sense and prudence--the chances are, nevertheless, a thousand
to one that he will begin his reply with--

"That is all very well, my dear--but you must reflect, that, etc.,
etc., et cetera"--each et cetera a dab of wet wool, taking out more
and more stiffening and color, until the beautiful project hangs, a
limp rag, on her hands, a forlorn wreck over which she could weep in
self-pity.

This is one of the "spots" to be "humored." Wives there are, and not a
few of them, sagacious and tender, who have learned the knack of
insinuating a scheme upon husbandly attention until the logical
spouses find themselves proposing--they believe of their own free
will--the very designs born of their partner's brains. This is genius,
and the practical application thereof is an art in itself. It may also
be classified for John's admonition, as the natural reaction of
ingenious wits against wet-blanketism. The funniest part of the
transaction is that John never suspects the ruse, even at the
hundredth repetition, and esteems himself, in dogged complacency, the
author of his spouse's goodliest ideas.

Such a one dreads nothing more than the reputation of being ruled by
his wife. The more hen-pecked he is, the less he knows it--and vice
versa. "He jests at scars who never felt a wound." She who has her
John well in hand has broken him in too thoroughly to allow him to
resent the curb, or to play with the bit.

His intentions--so far as he knows them--are so g