hich sometimes goes
on when one man is the centre of a large family of women, and the only
object upon which the natural feminine instinct can expend itself. No
greater damage can be done to a man than is done by this kind of
domestic idolatry. But, in truth, the evil is too pleasant to be
resisted; and there is scarcely a man so far master of himself as to
withstand the subtle intoxication, the sweet and penetrating poison, of
woman's tender flattery and loving submission. To at certain extent it
is so entirely the right thing, because it is natural and instinctive,
that it is difficult to draw the line and map out exactly the division
between right and wrong, pleasantness and harmfulness, and where loving
submission ends and debasing slavishness begins.

Spoilt women are spoilt mainly from a like cause--over-attention from
men. A few certainly are to be found, as pampered daughters, with
indulgent mammas and subservient aunts given up wholly to ruining their
young charge with the utmost despatch possible; but this is
comparatively a rare form of the disease, and one which a little
wholesome matrimonial discipline would soon cure. For it is seldom that
a petted daughter becomes a spoilt wife, human affairs having that
marvellous power of compensation, that inevitable tendency to readjust
the balance, which prevents the continuance of a like excess under
different forms.

Besides, a spoilt daughter generally makes such a supremely unpleasant
wife that the husband has no inducement to continue the mistake, and
therefore either lowers her tone by a judicious exhibition of snubbing,
or, if she is aggressive as well as unpleasant, leaves her to fight with
her shadows in the best way she can, glad for his own part to escape the
strife she will not forego. One characteristic of the spoilt woman is
her impatience of anything like rivalry. She never has a female
friend--certainly not one of her own degree, and not one at all in the
true sense of the word. Friendship presupposes equality, and a spoilt
woman knows no equality. She has been so long accustomed to consider
herself as the lady-paramount that she cannot understand it if any one
steps in to share her honors and divide her throne.

To praise the beauty of any other woman, to find her charming, or to pay
her the attention due to a charming woman, is to insult our spoilt
darling, and to slight her past forgiveness. If there is only one good
thing, it must be given to h