if you have entered into marriage with one, in whom you have ever discovered the slightest approach towards lewdness, either in deeds, words, or looks.  To marry has been your own act; you have made the contract for your own gratification; you knew the character of the other party; and the children, if any, or the community, are not to be the sufferers for your gross and corrupt passion. ‘Moderate chastity’ is all that you have, in fact, contracted for:  you have it, and you have no reason to complain.  When I come to address myself to the husband, I shall have to say more upon this subject, which I dismiss for the present with observing, that my observation has convinced me, that, when families are rendered unhappy from the existence of ‘moderate chastity,’ the fault, first or last, has been in the man, ninety-nine times out of every hundred.

91.  SOBRIETY.  By sobriety I do not mean merely an absence of drinking to a state of intoxication; for, if that be hateful in a man, what must it be in a woman!  There is a Latin proverb, which says, that wine, that is to say, intoxication, brings forth truth.  Whatever it may do in this way, in men, in women it is sure, unless prevented by age or by salutary ugliness, to produce a moderate, and a very moderate, portion of chastity.  There never was a drunken woman, a woman who loved strong drink, who was chaste, if the opportunity of being the contrary presented itself to her.  There are cases where health requires wine, and even small portions of more ardent liquor; but (reserving what I have further to say on this point, till I come to the conduct of the husband) young unmarried women can seldom stand in need of these stimulants; and, at any rate, only in cases of well-known definite ailments.  Wine! ‘only a glass or two of wine at dinner, or so’!  As soon as have married a girl whom I had thought liable to be persuaded to drink, habitually, ‘only a glass or two of wine at dinner, or so;’ as soon as have married such a girl, I would have taken a strumpet from the streets.  And it has not required age to give me this way of thinking:  it has always been rooted in my mind from the moment that I began to think the girls prettier than posts.  There are few things so disgusting as a guzzling woman.  A gormandizing one is bad enough; but, one who tips off the liquor with an appetite, and exclaims ’good! good!’ by a smack of her lips, is fit for nothing but a brothel.  There may be cases, amongst the hard-labouring women, such as reapers, for instance, especially when they have children at the breast; there may be cases, where very hard-working women may stand in need of a little good beer; beer, which, if taken in immoderate quantities, would produce intoxication.  But, while I only allow the possibility of the existence of such cases, I deny the necessity of any strong drink at all in