The gossips at a noted watering-place where I once spent a summer, found infinite amusement in the ways of a married heiress, whose fortune was settled so securely upon herself by her father that her husband could not touch the bulk of it with, or without her consent.  Her spouse was an ease-loving man of fashion, and accommodated himself gracefully to this order of things.  She loved him better than she loved her money, for she “kept” him well and grudged him nothing.  It was in accordance with her wishes that he made no pretence of business or profession.  “Why should he when she had enough for both?” she urged, amiably.  His handsome allowance was paid on the first of every month, and she exacted no account of expenditures.  Yet she contrived to make him and herself the laughing stock of the place by her naive ignorance of the truth that the situation was peculiar.  She sportively rated her lord in the hearing of others, for extravagance in dress, horses and other entertainments; affected to rail at the expense of “keeping a husband,” and, now and then, playfully threatened to “cut off supplies” if he did not do this or that.  In short, with unintentional satire, she copied to the letter the speech and tone of the average husband to his dependent wife.

“Only that and nothing more.”  Her purse-pride was obvious, but as inoffensive as purse-pride can be.  She lacked refinement, but she did not lack heart.  She would have resented the imputation that she reduced her good-looking, well-clothed, well-fed, well-mounted “Charley” to a state of vassalage against which any man of spirit would have rebelled.  He knew that he could have whatever it was within her power to bestow, to the half of her kingdom.  Her complaints of his prodigality meant as little as her menace of retrenchment, and nobody comprehended this better than he.  The owner of the money-bags is entitled by popular verdict to his or her jest.  Her pretended railing was “clear fun.”

The deeper and juster significance of the much derided clause of the marriage vow is the second I have offered.  “Live and let live” is a motto that should begin, continue and be best exemplified at home.  The wife either earns an honorable livelihood, or she is a licensed mendicant.  The man who, after a careful estimate of the services rendered by her who keeps the house, manages his servants, or does the work of the servants he does not hire; who bears and brings up his children in comfort, respectability and happiness; who looks after his clothing and theirs; nurses him and them in illness, and makes the world lovely for him in health—­does not consider that his wife has paid her way thus far, and is richly entitled to all he has given or will ever give her—­is not fit to conduct any business upon business principles.  If he be sensible and candid, let him decide what salary he can afford to pay this most useful of his employes—­and pay it as a debt, and not a gratuity.  The probability is that he will find that the sum justifies her in regarding herself as a partner in his craft or profession, with a fair amount of working-capital.