l the expenses required
for the adornment of her beauty without once venturing to make a
remark.

I tell you that if I had a marriageable daughter, whom I wanted to get
rid of, I would tell her to put all her retiring ways in the cloak-room
and to assert herself, and, after the wedding ceremony, I would whisper
in her ears:

'My dear child, never make yourself the slave of your husband; be good,
faithful and devoted to him, but do not forget that man is a strange
animal, who seldom appreciates what he does not pay for. In this respect
men are like those people who listen breathlessly to music in a hall or
theatre where they have paid a guinea for their seats, and who, as
guests in a drawing-room, take the very best music as a signal for
entering into general conversation. If you want your husband to listen
to your music, make him pay for his seat.'

The poor little woman who follows to the letter all the lectures she has
heard on matrimony, at home and at church wedding ceremonies, will soon
find the irreparable mistake she has made. In this role of devoted slave
she will lose her beauty, her intelligence, her very mind, and will
wither rapidly.

Devoting herself, body and soul, forgetting herself always in order to
increase the welfare of her husband she will work, wear herself out,
until, when her beauty is gone, her husband will feel for her nothing
but indifference, if not, alas! sometimes contempt.

If one of the two must endure a privation in order that the other may
have more comfort, it should be the man, always the man: first, because
hard work and privations do not hurt a man as they can hurt a woman,
physically and mentally; secondly, because a woman is far more apt to
appreciate self-abnegation in a man than a man in a woman.

All this does not mean that men are all brutes--no; although it must be
admitted that there is something brutal in their very nature which is
ever fascinated by what is piquant, and never excited by a devotion
which they feel is, above all, the duty of the stronger toward the
weaker.

Let women gently, diplomatically, but firmly, assert themselves on the
very threshold of matrimony, or all the concessions which they make at
the beginning will soon be considered by their husbands as their due. In
matrimonial life, as in the government of nations, you can never take
back concessions or privileges granted too quickly and without enough
consideration.

Women who start married li