I wonder if John—­disposed by nature and too often by education to hold such niceties of custom as trifles and cheap—­suspects what a blow is dealt to his wife’s ideals when he begins to show, either that he respects her less than of old, or that he is less truly a gentleman than his careful conservation of elegant proprieties during their courtship led her to imagine.  It costs him but a second’s thought and slight muscular exertion to lift his hat in kissing her on leaving home in the morning, and in returning at evening.  It ought not to be an effort for him to rise to his feet when she enters the room, and to comport himself at her table and in her drawing-room as he would at the board and in the parlor of his neighbor’s wife.  Each of these slight civilities elevates her in her own and in others’ eyes, and tends to give her her rightful place as queen of the home and of his heart.  She may be maid-of-all-work in a modest establishment, worn and depressed by over-much drudgery, but in her husband’s eyes she is the equal of any lady in the land.  Her stove-burned face and print gown do not delude him as to her real position.  Furthermore—­and this hint is directed sidewise at our “model”—­a sense of the incongruity between the fine courtesy of her husband’s manner, and of slovenly attire upon the object of his attentions—­would incite her to neatness and becomingness in dress.  It is worth while to look well in the eyes of one who never for a moment forgets that he is a gentleman, and his wife a lady.

When John finds himself excusing this and that lapse from perfect breeding in his home life with the plea—­“It is only my wife!” he needs to look narrowly at his grain and his seasoning.  He is in danger of “checking.”

Being a man—­or I would better say—­not being a woman—­John is probably made up without domestic tact, and his wife must be on her guard to cover the deficiency.  For example, if by some mortifying combination of mischances, a dish is scantily supplied, he helps it out lavishly, scrapes the bottom officiously, and with innocent barbarity calls your attention to the fact that it needs replenishing.

“I tried once to hold my husband back from the brink of social disaster,” said one wife.  “We sat opposite to one another at a dinner party where the conversation neared a topic that would be, I knew, extremely painful and embarrassing to our hostess.  My John led the talk—­all unaware of the peril—­and when the next sentence would, I felt, be fatal, I pressed his foot under the table.  What do you think that blessed innocent did?  Winced visibly and sharply—­stopped short in the middle of a word, and stared at me with pendulous jaw, and—­while everybody looked at him for the next breath—­said, resonantly—­’Jane! did you touch my foot?’”

The incident is essentially John-esque.  I am as positive as if I had called for a comparison of experience, that every wife who reads this could furnish a parallel sketch from life.  The average John is impervious to glance or gesture.  I know one who is a model husband in most respects, who, when a danger-signal is hung out from the other end of the table, draws general attention in diplomatic fashion thus—­