Yet consider what immense resources are given by civilization, by our
manners and by our love to the women who wish to conceal these material
actions from the scrutiny of a husband.

The inexorable box which keeps its mouth open to all comers receives its
epistolary provender from all hands.

There is also the fatal invention of the General Delivery. A lover finds
in the world a hundred charitable persons, male and female, who, for a
slight consideration, will slip the billets-doux into the amorous and
intelligent hand of his fair mistress.

A correspondence is a variable as Proteus. There are sympathetic inks. A
young celibate has told us in confidence that he has written a letter on
the fly-leaf of a new book, which, when the husband asked for it of the
bookseller, reached the hands of his mistress, who had been prepared the
evening before for this charming article.

A woman in love, who fears her husband's jealousy, will write and read
billets-doux during the time consecrated to those mysterious occupations
during which the most tyrannical husband must leave her alone.

Moreover, all lovers have the art of arranging a special code of
signals, whose arbitrary import it is difficult to understand. At a
ball, a flower placed in some odd way in the hair; at the theatre, a
pocket handkerchief unfolded on the front of the box; rubbing the nose,
wearing a belt of a particular color, putting the hat on one side,
wearing one dress oftener than another, singing a certain song in a
concert or touching certain notes on the piano; fixing the eyes on a
point agreed; everything, in fact, from the hurdy-gurdy which passes
your windows and goes away if you open the shutter, to the newspaper
announcement of a horse for sale--all may be reckoned as correspondence.

How many times, in short, will a wife craftily ask her husband to do
such and such commission for her, to go to such and such a shop or
house, having previously informed her lover that your presence at such
or such a place means yes or no?

On this point the professor acknowledges with shame that there is no
possible means of preventing correspondence between lovers. But a little
machiavelism on the part of the husband will be much more likely to
remedy the difficulty than any coercive measures.

An agreement, which should be kept sacred between married people, is
their solemn oath that they will respect each other's sealed letters.
Clever is the husband who makes t