d that she should pay her the first
visit after their marriage. And now that they had come together, their
only talk; was of husbands, whom they viewed in every light to which
husbands could be turned, and still found an inexhaustible novelty in
the theme. Mrs. Leonard beheld in her friend's joy the sweet reflection
of her own honeymoon, and Isabel was pleased to look upon the prosperous
marriage of the former as the image of her future. Thus, with immense
profit and comfort, they reassured one another by every question and
answer, and in their weak content lapsed far behind the representative
women of our age, when husbands are at best a necessary evil, and the
relation of wives to them is known to be one of pitiable subjection.
When these two pretty, fogies put their heads of false hair together,
they were as silly and benighted as their great-grandmothers could have
been in the same circumstances, and, as I say, shamefully encouraged
each other, in their absurdity. The absurdity appeared too good and
blessed to be true. "Do you really suppose, Basil," Isabel would say to
her oppressor, after having given him some elegant extract from the last
conversation upon husbands, "that we shall get on as smoothly as the
Leonards when we have been married ten years? Lucy says that things
go more hitchily the first year than ever they do afterwards, and that
people love each other better and better just because they've got used
to it. Well, our bliss does seem a little crude and garish compared with
their happiness; and yet"--she put up both her palms against his, and
gave a vehement little push--"there is something agreeable about it,
even at this stage of the proceedings."

"Isabel," said her husband, with severity, "this is bridal!"

"No matter! I only want to seem an old married woman to the general
public. But the application of it is that you must be careful not to
contradict me, or cross me in anything, so that we can be like the
Leonards very much sooner than they became so. The great object is not
to have any hitchiness; and you know you ARE provoking--at times."

They both educated themselves for continued and tranquil happiness by
the example and precept of their friends; and the time passed swiftly
in the pleasant learning, and in the novelty of the life led by the
Leonards. This indeed merits a closer study than can be given here, for
it is the life led by vast numbers of prosperous New Yorkers who love
both the e