"when the wife is honored. When
the wife is injured, the whole family decays; when the contrary is the
case, it flourishes." This may be taken as an eternal truth--as one of
those truths not to be put by, not to be argued down by casual
exceptions. It is just as true of nations as it is of men; of the whole
people as it is of individual families. So true it is, that it may be
regarded as a piece of very sound advice when we counsel all men,
married or single, to choose only such men for their friends as are
happy in their wedded lives. No man can afford to know a broken family.
Quarreling, discord, and connubial disagreements are catching. With
unhappiness at home, no man is safely to be trusted, no woman to be
sought in friendship. The fault may not be his or hers, but it must be
between them. A man and woman must prove that they can be a good husband
and wife before they can be admitted to have proved that they are good
citizens. Such a verdict may seem harsh, but it is necessary and just.
Young people just married can not possibly afford to know unhappy
couples; and they, in their turn, may, with mutual hypocrisy, rub on in
the world; but in the end they feel that the hypocrisy can not be played
out. They gradually withdraw from their friends and acquaintance, and
nurse their own miseries at home.

All good men feel, of course, that any distinctive separation of the
sexes, all those separate gatherings and marks which would divide woman
from man, and set her upon a separate pedestal, are as foolish as they
are really impracticable. You will find no one who believes less in what
certain philanthropists call the emancipation of women than a happy
mother and wife. She does not want to be emancipated; and she is quite
unwilling that, instead of being the friend and ally of man, she should
be his opponent. She feels truly that the woman's cause is man's.

"For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse. Could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain, whose dearest bond is this--
Not like to like, but like in difference."

The very virtues of woman, not less than her faults, fit her for her
attachment to man. There is no man so bad as not to find some pitying
woman who will admire and love him; and no man so wise but that he shall
find some woman equal to the full comprehension of him, ready to
understand him and to strengthen him. With such a woman he will grow
more tender, ductile, and appreciativ