"So there's the map before you, my dear. _That's all there is of Life._ If you've got married, you've climbed to the top of the hill--so now you can do as the rest of the wives do--stand still and crow a little while; and then commence your descent. No new discoveries to be made that _I know of_. Cry, if you feel like it--pocket handkerchiefs are only ninepence a-piece now."
"'The Military Argus has a long and prosy article headed 'How to make Home Happy.' A friend of ours has now a work in preparation, which solves the question--'It is to give your wife as much money as she asks for.' This entirely abolishes the necessity of kisses and soft sawder.'
"Betty! throw up the windows, loosen my belt, and bring me my vinaigrette!
"It's no use to faint, or go into hysterics, because there's nobody here just now that understands my case! but I'd have you to understand, sir----(fan me, Betty!) that----o-o-h!----that----(Julius Cæsar, what a Hottentot!) that if you have a wife _as is a wife_, neither 'kisses,' 'soft sawder,' or 'money,' can ever repay her for what she is to you!
"Listen to me! Do you remember when you were sick? _Who_ tip-toe-d round your room, arranging the shutters and curtain-folds with an instinctive knowledge of light, to a ray, that your tortured head could bear? Who turned your pillow on the cool side, and parted the thick, matted locks from your hot temples? Who moved glasses and spoons and phials without collision or _jingle_? Who looked at you with a compassionate smile, when you persisted you 'wouldn't take your medicine because it tasted so bad;' and kept a sober face, when you lay chafing there like a caged lion, calling for cigars and newspapers, and mint-juleps, and whiskey punches? Who migrated, unceasingly and uncomplainingly, from the big baby before her to the little baby in the cradle, without sleep, food, or rest? Who tempted your convalescent appetite with some rare dainty of her own making, and got fretted at because there was 'not sugar enough in it?' Who was omnipresent in chamber, kitchen, parlor and nursery, keeping the domestic wheels in motion that there should be no jar in the machinery? Who oiled the creaking door, that set your quivering nerves in a twitter? Who ordered tan to be strewn before the house, that your slumbers might be unbroken by noisy carriage wheels? Who never spoke of weary feet or shooting pains in the side, or chest, as she toiled up and down stairs to satisfy imaginary wants, that 'nobody but wife' could attend to? and who, when you got well and moved about the house just as good as new, choked down the tears, as you poised the half dollar she asked you for, on your forefinger, while you inquired 'how she spent the last one?'