98.  Now, I do not say that there are not many young women of this country who would, under similar circumstances, have acted as my wife did in this case; on the contrary, I hope, and do sincerely believe, that there are.  But when her age is considered; when we reflect, that she was living in a place crowded, literally crowded, with gaily-dressed and handsome young men, many of whom really far richer and in higher rank than I was, and scores of them ready to offer her their hand; when we reflect that she was living amongst young women who put upon their backs every shilling that they could come at; when we see her keeping the bag of gold untouched, and working hard to provide herself with but mere necessary apparel, and doing this while she was passing from fourteen to eighteen years of age; when we view the whole of the circumstances, we must say that here is an example, which, while it reflects honour on her sex, ought to have weight with every young woman whose eyes or ears this relation shall reach.

99.  If any young man imagine, that this great sobriety of conduct in young women must be accompanied with seriousness approaching to gloom, he is, according to my experience and observation, very much deceived.  The contrary is the fact; for I have found that as, amongst men, your jovial companions are, except over the bottle, the dullest and most insipid of souls; so amongst women, the gay, rattling, and laughing, are, unless some party of pleasure, or something out of domestic life, is going on, generally in the dumps and blue-devils.  Some stimulus is always craved after by this description of women; some sight to be seen, something to see or hear other than what is to be found at home, which, as it affords no incitement, nothing ’to raise and keep up the spirits’, is looked upon merely as a place to be at for want of a better; merely a place for eating and drinking, and the like; merely a biding place, whence to sally in search of enjoyments.  A greater curse than a wife of this description, it would be somewhat difficult to find; and, in your character of Lover, you are to provide against it.  I hate a dull, melancholy, moping thing:  I could not have existed in the same house with such a thing for a single month.  The mopers are, too, all giggle at other times:  the gaiety is for others, and the moping for the husband, to comfort him, happy man, when he is alone:  plenty of smiles and of badinage for others, and for him to participate with others; but the moping is reserved exclusively for him.  One hour she is capering about, as if rehearsing a jig; and, the next, sighing to the motion of a lazy needle, or weeping over a novel and this is called sentiment!  Music, indeed!  Give me a mother singing to her clean and fat and rosy baby, and making the house ring with her extravagant and hyperbolical encomiums on it.  That is the music which is ‘the food of love;’