sex than my mother; and I believe a notable wife is more impatient of
controul than an indolent one. An indolent one, perhaps, thinks she
has some thing to compound for; while women of the other character, I
suppose, know too well their own significance to think highly of that of
any body else. All must be their own way. In one word, because they are
useful, they will be more than useful.

I do assure you, my dear, were I man, and a man who loved my quiet, I
would not have one of these managing wives on any consideration. I would
make it a matter of serious inquiry beforehand, whether my mistress's
qualifications, if I heard she was notable, were masculine or feminine
ones. If indeed I were an indolent supine mortal, who might be in danger
of perhaps choosing to marry for the qualifications of a steward.

But, setting my mother out of the question, because she is my mother,
have I not seen how Lady Hartley pranks up herself above all her sex,
because she knows how to manage affairs that do not belong to her sex
to manage?--Affairs that do no credit to her as a woman to understand;
practically, I mean; for the theory of them may not be amiss to be
known.

Indeed, my dear, I do not think a man-woman a pretty character at all:
and, as I said, were I a man, I would sooner choose a dove, though it
were fit for nothing but, as the play says, to go tame about house,
and breed, than a wife that is setting at work (my insignificant self
present perhaps) every busy our my never-resting servants, those of
the stud not excepted; and who, with a besom in her hand, as I may say,
would be continually filling my with apprehensions that she wanted to
sweep me out of my own house as useless lumber.

Were indeed the mistress of a family (like the wonderful young lady I so
much and so justly admire) to know how to confine herself within her own
respectable rounds of the needle, the pen, the housekeeper's bills, the
dairy for her amusement; to see the poor fed from superfluities that
would otherwise be wasted, and exert herself in all the really-useful
branches of domestic management; then would she move in her proper
sphere; then would she render herself amiably useful, and respectably
necessary; then would she become the mistress-wheel of the family,
[whatever you think of your Anna Howe, I would not have her be the
master-wheel,] and every body would love her; as every body did you,
before your insolent brother came back, flushed wi