h occasions, had been duly
paid and as duly returned, admiration, always fickle, lavished its
regards on new objects, and Gloriosus and his wife were forgotten. He
now found, that she, whom he had chosen for the companion of his life,
was deficient in every qualification that could render such a companion
useful or agreeable. She had been told from her earliest youth, that her
charms of person were such as always to ensure her admirers, without
being at the pains of cultivating the graces of her mind. Her mother
thought she could not too early introduce into the world such a
beautiful creature; and, from the age of fifteen to the day when she
married Gloriosus, her time was almost wholly taken up in visiting and
receiving visits, and her mind was entirely employed in devising some
new mode of decorating her person. Such a one was little calculated to
sustain with dignity, "the mild majesty of private life." Her ideas were
few and trivial; and her conversation was consequently trifling and
insipid. Her former habits made her ill qualified for a nurse; and her
love of pleasure made home a restraint to her, and the duties of a
mother insupportable. The disappointed Gloriosus, disgusted with his
home, sought for relief in the circles of pleasure and dissipation. His
wife was too much engrossed with her person and her parties to concern
herself about him; so that finding themselves mutually disagreeable,
they agreed to a final separation.

Apicius married for the sake of having a good housekeeper and cook. He
is a Mahometan in his opinion of women, and deems submission to her
husband the cardinal virtue in a wife. He has no idea of making a friend
and adviser of one whom he looks upon merely as his head-servant. He has
the same objection to any sort of learning in women which many people
have to the education of the poor: he thinks it must render them averse
from the performance of those menial duties of life, for which, he
imagines, they were exclusively created. It was his good fortune to meet
with a woman exactly suited to his disposition. She understood "the
whole art of cookery," the four rules of arithmetic, and could read the
New Testament without much difficulty. She had never been taught to
think for herself; the duty of obedience, which had been early
inculcated upon her by a severe father, had grown easy by habit; and she
was glad to save herself the trouble of relying upon her own resources.
She is, therefore, th