that he is by nature and environment less guarded and protected, and the penalties for folly are less severe.  And of all men, unless it is a clergyman, a physician is most exposed to temptation.  He is the confidant of hysterical women and the sharer of domestic secrets.  Many a woman believes she is ill only because she desires the sympathy of her doctor, just as many a woman fancies herself disturbed with religious agitation only because she wants the society of her minister.

Of course a doctor of any character or principle does not compromise his reputation or disgrace his calling readily.  I hear Doctor McAllister spoken of as a man of high standing, and his picture shows a well-balanced head and an honest, manly face.  But “A man’s a man for a’ that,” my dear Winifred.

We must accept facts as they exist all about us, and we must not demand of half-evolved human beings what we would expect of wholly divine creatures.  It is an unnatural position for a man to be separated from the wife he loves for months and years.

Unless he is sustained by intense religious beliefs, extreme sympathy or sorrow for her (as he might be were she compelled by some great trouble or duty to be absent), it is impossible for him not to grow in a measure forgetful of his ideals of constancy, and to drift into bachelor habits of distraction.  Men do a thousand and one things for amusement which no woman could or would.  Gilded and glittering halls of vice are inviting the inspection and patronage of men who are left at home by journeying and pleasure-seeking wives.

I know this terrible statement to be absolutely true—­gambling-houses and dens of infamy speak of their “best season” when wives leave town for summer outings, just as a farmer speaks of his harvest season when crops are ripe. I do not suppose your husband will seek the companionship of gamblers or depraved souls during your absence.  Men as seemingly high and strong as he have fallen so low, but I do not believe he will.  Yet, so long as we know such conditions exist, and so long as men as a class take the liberties they do when left to find distraction and entertainment, it seems to me little less than criminal when a young wife like yourself deliberately leaves her home and husband for the sake of any possible attainment.

You have no right to marry a man and then to make his happiness and his comfort secondary to your ambitions.

If he had neglected you, if he failed to support you, if he was not loyal to you, it would be different.

But you say he is “the best of men,” and that you never have regretted marrying him.

Then let me beg of you to stand by him, as a wife should, and to make what progress in your music you can at home, and wait until your husband can accompany you before you go abroad to study.

The highway of divorce is crowded with the student wives who have been “abroad to study,” leaving their husbands at home to earn the money.  Do not be one of them.