Womanhood

There is no surer, heavier, more hopeless drag upon a manly courage and ambition than a weak, frivolous, self-indulgent wife, whose one concern in life is present pleasure. In great crises, which demand nerve and resolution, she unmans him, as did that British naval officer's wife, whose helpless terror in shipwreck so unnerved her husband and brought such disaster as to lead to a rule forbidding wives of naval officers to sail in the same ship with their husbands. Of such a woman Miss Yonge has well said that, ''when pain and anguish wring the brow," she is likely to be too much occupied with her own hysterics to be "a ministering angel." Still worse, however, than this failure at great crises is the daily drag of her aimlessness and selfishness upon his manhood. Such a wife may be amiable, affectionate, doting, indeed; so much the worse for the husband. If she were a termagant, he could harden himself against her; but when she coaxes and cries, and, like Sampson's wife, lies sore upon him, treating every self-denial which he asks her to share as a proof of coldness, and every sacrifice for honor and for conscience' sake as a fraud against her rights and those of her children, what is he to do? What he will do in nine cases out of ten is what Lydgate did when he married Rosamond Vincy—give up all high ambition for study, for research, for self-denying service of his fellowmen, stifle the voice of conscience when it demands sacrifice, and devote himself to the one sole concern of gaining, by hook or by crook, the wherewithal to keep sunshine at his fireside, by the unlimited indulgence of a frivolous woman's fancies.--Anon