Then there are the cases where indolence, or selfishness, or vanity, or the love of social excitement, in the woman, unfits her for home life.  Here we come upon ground where perhaps woman is the greater sinner.  It must be remembered, however, that against this must be balanced the neglect produced by club-life, or by the life of society-membership, in a man.  A brilliant young married belle in London once told me that she was glad her husband was so fond of his club, for it amused him every night while she went to balls.  “Married men do not go much into society here,” she said, “unless they are regular flirts,—­which I do not think my husband would ever be, for he is very fond of me,—­so he goes every night to his club, and gets home about the same time that I do.  It is a very nice arrangement.”  It is perhaps needless to add that they are long since divorced.

It is common to denounce club-life in our large cities as destructive of the home.  The modern club is simply a more refined substitute for the old-fashioned tavern, and is on the whole an advance in morals as well as manners.  In our large cities a man in a certain social coterie belongs to a club, if he can afford it, as a means of contact with his fellows, and to have various conveniences which he cannot so economically obtain at home.  A few haunt clubs constantly; the many use them occasionally.  More absorbing than these, perhaps, are the secret societies which have so revived among us since the war, and which consume time so fearfully.  There was a case mentioned in the newspapers lately of a man who belonged to some twenty of these associations; and when he died, and each wished to conduct his funeral, great was the strife!  In the small city where I write there are seventeen secret societies down in the directory, and I suppose as many more not so conspicuous.  I meet men who assure me that they habitually attend a society meeting every evening of the week except Sunday, when they go to church meeting.  These are rarely men of leisure; they are usually mechanics or business men of some kind, who are hard at work all day, and never see their families except at meal-times.  Their case is far worse, so far as absence from home is concerned, than that of the “club-men” of large cities; for these are often men of leisure, who, if married, at least make home one of their lounging-places, which such secret-society men do not.

I honestly believe that this melancholy desertion of the home is largely due to the traditional separation between the alleged spheres of the sexes.  The theory still prevails largely, that home is the peculiar province of the woman, that she has almost no duties out of it; and hence, naturally enough, that the husband has almost no duties in it.  If he is amused there, let him stay there; but, as it is not his recognized sphere of duty, he is not actually violating any duty by absenting himself.  This theory even pervades our manuals of morals, of metaphysics, and of popular science; and it is not every public teacher who has the manliness, having once stated it, to modify his statement, as did the venerable President Hopkins of Williams College, when lecturing the other day to the young ladies of Vassar.