It is perfectly amazing the quantity of insulting advice volunteered in this day to women. Now here is an extract, I am happy to say, in this instance, from an English journal; the land, _par excellence_, of wife-beating, and kindred abominations in "high" and "low" life, in which the wife is advised if she would "wind her husband around her finger,"--though why that amusement is particularly desirable I fail to see,--if she would do this, "she must carefully study the cookery-book; so that his meals need not be monotonous." How many of his children she must attend to, during this interesting perusal, and while perfecting the results of such study, our writer does not state; nor does he throw any light upon the question--whether, when this delicate animal is gorged like the anaconda, he will, as does the anaconda, go immediately into a state of stupor, and be comparatively harmless until other re-enforcements are needed.
Also he tells the wife that "opposition and contradiction always make him furious; then he stamps and roars and becomes dangerous: she must by all means avoid that." It is so strange, this Solomon says, "that when a wife _knows_ that a certain line of conduct is sure to produce this effect, she will do it, though victory is easy provided"--well, in short, provided she allows him to stamp and roar and become dangerous, like his son Tommy, when he can't have another stick of candy, and whom he himself would severely punish, for imitating his gentlemanly papa.
Are there no lines of conduct a husband persistently pursues towards his wife, though he "knows they are sure to wound and give offence?" And would he think "stamping and roaring and being dangerous" any excuse for a dislike of it? Is the man who sends his dear little child for that which will intoxicate him, or takes that child to bar-rooms and drinking-places to obtain it, never to be remonstrated with by the mother, lest he should be "angry"? Is the man who allows his relatives constantly to interfere with and slander his wife, who never write him letters without containing sly insinuations, intended--howsoever they may fail--to disturb conjugal and family harmony; who institute a court of inquiry into family expenses, probable journeys, &c., location of residence, and insist upon all these things being settled according to _their_ means and standard, is this husband never to be told that such interference is insufferable, "because he will be angry"?