ress of the house; act your own pleasure. Thank you for the
suggestion about dinner. I may find it convenient to act thereon."
The last part of this sentence was extorted by the continued
irritating language of Mrs. Uhler. Its utterance rather cooled the
lady's indignant ardor, and checked the sharp words that were
rattling from her tongue. A truce to open warfare was tacitly agreed
upon between the parties. The antagonism was not, however, the less
real. Mrs. Uhler knew that her husband expected of her a degree of
personal attention to household matters that she considered
degrading to her condition as a wife; and, because he _expected_
this, she, in order to maintain the dignity of her position, gave
even less attention to these matters than would otherwise have been
the case. Of course, under such administration of domestic affairs,
causes for dissatisfaction on the part of Mr. Uhler, were ever in
existence. For the most part he bore up under them with commendable
patience; but, there were times when weak human nature faltered by
the way--when, from heart-fulness the mouth would speak. This was
but to add new fuel to the flame. This only gave to Mrs. Uhler a
ground of argument against her husband as an unreasonable,
oppressive tyrant; as one of the large class of men who not only
regard woman as inferior, but who, in all cases of weak submission,
hesitate not to put a foot upon her neck.
Some of the female associates, among whom Mrs. Uhler unfortunately
found herself thrown, were loud talkers about woman's rights and
man's tyranny; and to them, with a most unwife-like indelicacy of
speech, she did not hesitate to allude to her husband as one of the
class of men who would trample upon a woman if permitted to do so.
By these ladies she was urged to maintain her rights, to keep ever
in view the dignity and elevation of her sex, and to let man, the
tyrant, know, that a time was fast approaching when his haughty
pride would be humbled to the dust.
And so Mrs. Uhler, under this kind of stimulus to the maintainance
of her own rights against the imaginary aggressions of her husband,
trampled upon his rights in numberless ways.
As time wore on, no change for the better occurred. A woman does not
reason to just conclusions, either from facts or abstract principles
like man; but takes, for the most part, the directer road of
perception. If, therefore her womanly instincts are all right, her
conclusions will be true; bu
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