mind.

That ignorance is bliss is a profound truth in married life and wives
should strive to be guided by it. I believe women exist who actually
make a practice of going through their husbands' pockets when
opportunity offers, presumably in the expectation of finding some
incriminating letter or bill. What they expect to gain in the event of
an unpleasant discovery, heaven alone knows! Nothing but a more or less
hateful scene, and a consequent loss of all peace between them, without
the real source of the trouble being affected in the least. Fortunately
few husbands are fools enough to carry compromising documents on their
persons. In any case this surveillance is revolting, and where mutual
respect exists, for which I have so strongly urged the necessity, these
lapses of taste could not occur.

In justice to those unhappy women who suffer the terrible affliction of
a husband given to excessive drink or gambling, I must add that, when
this is the case, a wife is right to try by every means in her power to
keep her husband away from his club, which offers greater opportunities
than the home circle for indulging in these vices.

* * *

And now for a special word to men. On a foregoing page I mentioned the
possibility of a married woman going out to dinner and the theatre with
a man friend. In London life this is so usual an occurrence that any
explanation of it would seem homely and a little absurd to the
initiated. But the initiated are a very small section of the community,
and as this book is humbly put forward for anyone interested in marriage
to read--in short, for everyone who _will_ read it--I propose therefore
to enlarge somewhat on this theme for the benefit of the uninitiated
majority. A great many men would never dream of allowing their wives to
go out at night alone with other men; why, I cannot pretend to know,
since they surely cannot insult their wives and their friends by the
idea of any impropriety in connection with them. Possibly it is due to
the survival of some primitive masculine feeling that they cannot
explain. (In former times husbands were even more exacting, and under
the Justinian code a man could divorce his wife merely for going to a
circus without his consent, or for going to baths and banquets with
other men!) To me it seems equally as unreasonable as women's
disapproval of men's clubs. Just as a sensible wife makes no objection
to her husband's club, so a wise husband allows hi