with so much luggage reckoned as
indispensable; and at the first station your husband, who is not an
angel, loses his temper amidst all these encumbrances, sends it all to
the devil under some pretext or other, lets you go on alone, and gets
into another carriage. I do not require, mark me, that you should be
allowed to grow up uncared for, that good or evil instincts should be
suffered to spring up in you anyhow: but it were better that they should
not treat your poor mind like the foot of a well-born Chinese girl--that
they should not enclose it in a porcelain slipper.

A marriageable young lady is a product of maternal industry, which takes
ten years to fructify, and needs from five to six more years of study on
the part of the husband to purify, strip, and restore to its real shape.
In other words, it takes ten years to make a bride and six years at least
to turn this bride into a woman again. Admit frankly that this is time
lost as regards happiness, but try to make it up if your husband will
permit you to do so.

The sole guaranty of fidelity between husband and wife is love. One
remains side by side with a fellow-traveller only so long as one
experiences pleasure and happiness in his company. Laws, decrees, oaths,
may prevent faithlessness, or at least punish it, but they can neither
hinder nor punish intention. But as regards love, intention and deed are
the same.

Is it not true, my dear sisters, that you are of this opinion? Do not you
thoroughly understand that if love is absent from marriage it should, on
the contrary, be its real pivot? To make one's self lovable is the main
thing. Believe my white hairs that it is so, and let me give you some
more advice.

Yes, I favor marriage--I do not conceal it--the happy marriage in which
we cast into the common lot our ideas and our sorrows, as well as our
good-humor and our affections. Suppress, by all means, in this
partnership, gravity and affectation, yet add a sprinkling of gallantry
and good-fellowship. Preserve even in your intimacy that coquetry you so
readily assume in society. Seek to please your husband. Be amiable.
Consider that your husband is an audience, whose sympathy you must
conquer.

In your manner of loving mark those shades, those feminine delicacies,
which double the price of things. Do not be miserly, but remember that
the manner in which one gives adds to the value of the gift; or rather do
not give--make yourself sought after. Think of