anced head and an honest, manly face. But "A man's a man for a'
that," my dear Winifred.

We must accept facts as they exist all about us, and we must not demand
of half-evolved human beings what we would expect of wholly divine
creatures. It is an unnatural position for a man to be separated from
the wife he loves for months and years.

Unless he is sustained by intense religious beliefs, extreme sympathy or
sorrow for her (as he might be were she compelled by some great trouble
or duty to be absent), it is impossible for him not to grow in a measure
forgetful of his ideals of constancy, and to drift into bachelor habits
of distraction. Men do a thousand and one things for amusement which no
woman could or would. Gilded and glittering halls of vice are inviting
the inspection and patronage of men who are left at home by journeying
and pleasure-seeking wives.

I know this terrible statement to be absolutely true--_gambling-houses
and dens of infamy speak of their "best season" when wives leave town
for summer outings, just as a farmer speaks of his harvest season when
crops are ripe._ I do not suppose your husband will seek the
companionship of gamblers or depraved souls during your absence. Men as
seemingly high and strong as he have fallen so low, but I do not believe
he will. Yet, so long as we know such conditions exist, and so long as
men as a class take the liberties they do when left to find distraction
and entertainment, it seems to me little less than criminal when a young
wife like yourself deliberately leaves her home and husband for the sake
of any possible attainment.

You have no right to marry a man and then to make his happiness and his
comfort secondary to your ambitions.

If he had neglected you, if he failed to support you, if he was not
loyal to you, it would be different.

But you say he is "the best of men," and that you never have regretted
marrying him.

Then let me beg of you to stand by him, as a wife should, and to make
what progress in your music you can at home, and wait until your husband
can accompany you before you go abroad to study.

The highway of divorce is crowded with the student wives who have been
"abroad to study," leaving their husbands at home to earn the money. Do
not be one of them.

There are greater things than a satisfied ambition, and a clean, happy,
united married life is one.

To Mrs. Charles Gordon

_Concerning Maternity_

I have tried to imagin