Not all our orphaned children are in our orphan asylums, or under the supervision of “The Orphans’ Guardians.”  There are more of them at home with their fathers and mothers, and especially among our well-to-do families.  There are children growing up who scarcely know anything else of their father except that he is referred to during the day by their mother when they are bad, as that dread personage who would inflict a severe chastisement on them when he returns, or whose presence silences their fun and makes their own absence agreeable.  He makes no effort to entertain them, takes no interest in their pleasures, in their progress at school.  He is simply their punisher, but not their friend, and it is not at all surprising to see children growing up with a conception of their father such as that little boy had, who, when told by a minister of heaven, and of the meeting of the departed there, asked:  “And will father be there?” On being told that “of course he would be there,” he at once replied, “Then I don’t want to go.”  Occasionally wife and husband spend an evening out, or they entertain company at home, and oh, what a transformation she observes in him.  In other people’s homes, or when other people are present, his stock of material for conversation is unlimited.  Then and there he is full of fun, bright and cheerful; when alone with his wife he has scarcely a word to say; he moves about the house with the lofty indifference of a lord, and with a heartless disregard of every member of the household.  At home he is cold and cross and boorish, in other women’s parlors he is polite and considerate and engaging.  He has a smile and a compliment for other women, none for his wife.  If they attend an evening reception, he brings his wife there, and he takes her home; during the interval she has little, if any, of his company.  She may be shy, she may be a stranger, she may not be much accustomed to society life, she may feel herself out of place in the gay assemblage, she may be unentertained or bored or annoyed, it matters not to him as long as he is having a good time with the boys, or is encircled by the ladies fair, who unanimously think him the most gallant of men, unrivaled in his wit and wisdom and conversational powers, and who secretly sigh if but their husbands were like him.

To such an extent is this wife-neglect carried on that a lady not long ago made a wager that, in nine cases out of ten, she would distinguish between married and unmarried couples.  She won the wager.  When asked to explain her method of discrimination, she said:  “When you see a gentleman and a lady walking in silence side by side, it is a married couple; when their conversation is continuous and animated, and smile-and-laugh-provoking, they are single.  When a gentleman sits next to a lady in the theatre, and never keeps his opera glass away from the boxes and galleries and stage, he is her husband; when his eyes rest more on her than on the stage, it is her lover.  When a lady, who sits at the side of a gentleman, drops her glove, and she stoops to hunt it, it is a married couple; if he stoops quickly to pick it up it is an unmarried couple.  When a lady plays, and a gentleman stands near her, and does not turn for her the pages of the music book, it is her husband; when you see his fingers in eager readiness to turn the leaf, it is not her husband.”