are amongst the consequences of
the master's absence; and why not, seeing that he is setting the
example? Fire, candle, profligate visitants, expences, losses, children
ruined in habits and morals, and, in short, a train of evils hardly to
be enumerated, arise from this most vicious habit of the master spending
his leisure time from home. But beyond all the rest is the
_ill-treatment of the wife_. When left to ourselves we all seek the
company that we _like best_; the company in which we _take the most
delight_: and therefore every husband, be his state of life what it may,
who spends his leisure time, or who, at least, is in the habit of doing
it, in company other than that of his wife and family, tells her and
them, as plainly by deeds as he could possibly do by words, that he
_takes more delight in other company than in theirs_. Children repay
this with _disregard_ for their father; but to a wife of any
sensibility, it is either a dagger to her heart or an incitement to
revenge, and revenge, too, of a species which a young woman will seldom
be long in want of the means to gratify. In conclusion of these remarks
respecting _absentee husbands_, I would recommend all those who are
prone to, or likely to fall into, the practice, to remember the words of
Mrs. SULLEN, in the BEAUX' STRATAGEM: 'My husband,' says she, addressing
a footman whom she had taken as a paramour, 'comes reeling home at
midnight, tumbles in beside me as a salmon flounces in a net, oversets
the economy of my bed, belches the fumes of his drink in my face, then
twists himself round, leaving me half naked, and listening till morning
to that tuneful nightingale, his nose.' It is at least forty-three years
since I read the BEAUX' STRATAGEM, and I now quote from memory; but the
passage has always occurred to me whenever I have seen a sottish
husband; and though that species of revenge, for the taking of which the
lady made this apology, was carrying the thing too far, yet I am ready
to confess, that if I had to sit in judgment on her for taking even this
revenge, my sentence would be very lenient; for what right has such a
husband to expect _fidelity_? He has broken his vow; and by what rule of
right has she to be bound to hers? She thought that she was marrying _a
man_; and she finds that she was married to a beast. He has, indeed,
committed no offence that _the law of the land_ can reach; but he has
violated the vow by which he obtained possession of her