332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the household a source which I would gladly pass over if duty did 

 not compel me to notice it, owing as it is to the sedulous and tender 

 care taken by the devoted, anxiou3 partner of his life, who in secret 

 has long noted and grieved over her lord's declining health and force. 

 She observes that he is now more fatigued than formerly after the 

 labors of the day, is less vigorous for business, for exercise, or for 

 sport, less energetic every way in design and execution. She naturally 

 desires to see him stronger, to sustain the enfeebled power which age 

 is necessarily undermining ; and with her there is but one idea, and it 

 is practically embodied in one method viz., to increase his force by 

 augmenting his nourishment ! She remonstrates at every meal at what 

 she painfully feels is the insufficient portion of food he consumes. He 

 pleads in excuse, almost with the consciousness of guilt, that he has 

 really eaten all that appetite permits, but he is besought with plaintive 

 voice and affectionate entreaty " to try and take a little more," and, 

 partly to stay the current of gentle complaint, partly to gratify his 

 companion, and partly, as with a faint internal sigh he may confess to 

 himself, " for peace and comfort's sake," he assents, and with some 

 violence to his nature forces his palate to comply, thus adding a slight 

 burden to the already satiated stomach. Or if, perchance, endowed 

 with a less compliant nature, he is churlish enough to decline the prof- 

 fered advice, and even to question the value of a cup of strong beef- 

 tea, or egg whipped up with sherry, which unsought has pursued him 

 to his studv, or been sent to his office between eleven and twelve of 

 the forenoon, and which he knows by experience must if swallowed 

 inevitably impair an appetite for lunch, then not improbably he will 

 fall a victim to his solicitous helpmeet's well-meaning designs in some 

 other shape. There is the tasteless calf's-foot jelly, of which a portion 

 may be surreptitiously introduced into a bowl of tea with small chance 

 that its presence will be detected, especially if accompanied by a good 

 modicum of cream ; or the little cup of cocoa or of coffee masking an 

 egg well beaten and smoothly blended to tempt the palate types of 

 certain small diplomatic exercises, delightful, first, because they are 

 diplomatic and not direct in execution ; and, secondly, because the 

 supporting system has been triumphantly maintained, my lord's natural 

 and instinctive objections thereto notwithstanding. 



But the loving wife for whom my sympathy is not more profound 

 than is my sorrow for her almost incurable error in relation to this 

 single department of her duty is by no means the only source of 

 fallacious counsel to the man whose strength is slowly declining with 

 age. We might almost imagine him to be the object of a conspiracy, 

 so numerous are the temptations which beset him on every side. The 

 daily and weekly journals display column after column of advertise- 

 ments, enumerating all manner of edibles and drinkables, and loudly 

 trumpeting their virtues, the chief of which is always declared to be 

 the abundance of some quality averred to be at once medicinal and 



