y herself with precision, is confined to a knowledge
of generalities. The man who will seriously initiate a woman into his
own life, can do it safely and completely, if she love him, but he
would require to possess both patience and kindness. They have come
together, as it were, from the two opposite poles, and prepared by a
totally different education. Since it is so, how can you expect that
your young wife, intelligent as she is, should understand you at once?
If she do not understand you, it is, too frequently, your own fault:
this almost always proceeds from the abstract, dry, and scholastic
forms which you have imbibed from your education. She, remaining in
the sphere of common sense and sentiment, understands nothing of your
formulas, and seldom, very seldom, indeed, do you know how to translate
them into plain language. This requires address, will, and feeling.
You would want, sir, let me tell you, both more sense and more love.

At the first word she does not understand, the husband loses his
patience. "She is incapable, she is too frivolous." He leaves her,
and all is over. But that day he loses much. If he had persevered, he
would gradually have led her along with him; she would have lived his
life, and their marriage would have been real. Ah! what a companion he
has lost! how sure a confidant! and how zealous an ally! In this
person, who, when left to herself, seems to him too trifling, he would
have found, in moments of difficulty, a ray of inspiration, and often
useful advice.

I am here entering upon a large subject, where I should wish to stop.
But I cannot. One word more: the man of modern times, a victim of the
division of work, and often condemned to a narrow speciality, in which
he loses the sentiment of general life, and becomes a morbid sort of a
being, would require to have with him a young and serene mind, more
nicely balanced, and less given to specialty than his own, that might
lead him from the confined notions of trade, and restore him to the
charms of a well-regulated mind. In this age of eager opposition, when
the day is taken up with active business, and we return home worn out
with toil or disappointment, it is necessary to have a wife at the
domestic fire-side to refresh the burning brain of the husband. This
workman (what are we all but workmen, each in his own particular
line?), this blacksmith, panting with thirst, after beating the iron,
would receive from her the livin