ADVICE TO WIVES. 69 



cooked mutton-chop. A fair charlotte-russe is easier to get than a 

 perfect cup of coffee, and you will find a sparkling jelly for your 

 dessert when you sigh in vain for a well-cooked potato. They for- 

 get that it is a thousand times better to be able to do a common 

 thing well than an uncommon one tolerably. 



CHEERFUL DISPOSITION A good wife also cultivates cheerful- 

 ness and placidity of temper and disposition. Nothing disturbs 

 digestion and consequently injures health so much as a fretful, 

 easily ruined temper. " Our passions," says Dr. Grosvenor, u may 

 be compared to the winds in the air, which, when gentle and 

 moderate, fill the sail and carry the ship on smoothly to the desired 

 port ; but when violent, unmanageable and boisterous, they grow to 

 a storm and threaten the ruin and destruction of all." 



TO WIVES. 



WHY HUSBANDS SEEK OTHER ASSOCIATIONS. 



The causes of disease are legitimate inquiries for a medical 

 treatise. Domestic infelicity, standing prominently on the list, as 

 a cause of the physical ills of humanity, demands something more 

 \han mere passing mention. How to continue the love the young 

 *vdfe has inspired, and how to maintain the regard and affection she 

 has won, are very important inquiries for her, though they are often 

 sadly neglected. Wives are too prone to require love and admira- 

 tion, while they are entirely regardless of the performance of those 

 duties which inspire affection and esteem. Love without recipro- 

 city cannot continue. 



This fact should always be borne in mind: That love, affection 

 and esteem are not matters of choice. "We cannot control them any 

 more than we can control the elements of the air. They come 

 and go according to merit. At any time, when the wife discovers 

 that the affections of her husband are subsiding, she should closely 

 examine her own course; for it is possible that the fault lies with 

 her. Perhaps there is a perversion of those qualities on which were 

 based his earlier love and esteem, which have been supplanted by 

 those which are coarse, uncouth and repulsive. If she has practiced 

 deception, suppressing her real disposition and character, as is 

 sometimes the case, from her earliest acquaintance with her hus- 

 band until after marriage, when she permits her real disposition, 

 in its irritability and grossness, to again appear, it cannot but 

 reasonably be expected that the husband's regard and affection will 

 rapidly subside. Merit attracts love and esteem, and these are 

 repelled where it does not exist. For an individual to demand 

 affection and admiration, when they are not due or merited, is 

 requiring that which it is an impossibility for human nature to render. 

 As well require one to take gall, and demand that it be to him 

 sweet and savory. One very prolific cause of the alienation of the 



