dispute the wills of recalcitrant relatives who wish to leave their fortunes to others than themselves; she has left them too little liberty, and trained them in ignorance of such a virtue as disinterestedness; she is too apt to encourage her son in the theory of the wild oats-sowing, without even the saving grace of limiting that period to pre-nuptial days, being trained herself in the fixed conviction of her land, that man is a tameless beast who cannot exist without fugitive loves throughout his chequered career. Indeed, I have heard a very pious old French lady assert that a married man may have a hundred mistresses and be a perfectly honest man whom nobody should criticise. When I made respectful mention of the wife's injuries, she shrugged, called me an unsophisticated fool, and said that every sensible girl, on her wedding-morn, understood what she was facing, and, if she were well-bred, she was wise enough to keep her eyes shut. No wife, she maintained, could expect to learn anything to her advantage by prying into her husband's habits and distractions outside the portals of home, and so her wisdom lay in studied ignorance. The thing to prevent in a husband or son was extravagance. So long as the purse-strings remained unloosened, and the health was uninjured, a judicious woman should ask for nothing more from the men around her. For this reason, the novelists show
