“We will go to the Capes,” said my husband promptly and cheerfully.

“No,” said I, emulous now for the first time in a new cause.  “I am sure the time will pass agreeably enough at the Springs.  And as you evidently prefer going there, we will let the Capes pass for this year.”

“To the Capes, Mary, and nowhere else,” replied my husband, in the very best of humours.  “I am sure you will enjoy yourself far better there.  I did not know your sister was going.”

And to the Capes we went, and I did enjoy myself excellently well.  As for my husband, I never saw him in a better state of mind.  To me he was more like a lover than a husband.  No, I will not say that either, for I can’t admit that a husband may not be as kind and affectionate as a lover; for he can and will be if managed rightly, and a great deal more so.  Whenever I expressed a wish, it appeared to give him pleasure to gratify it.  Seeing this, instead of suffering myself to be the mere recipient of kind attentions, I began to vie with him in the sacrifice of selfish wishes and feelings.

It is wonderful how all was changed after this.  There were no more struggles on my part to manage my husband, and yet I generally had things my own way.  Before I could not turn him to the right nor the left, though I strove to do so with my utmost strength.  Now I held him only with a silken fetter, and guided him, without really intending to do so, in almost any direction.

Several years have passed since that ever-to-be-remembered, happy visit to Cape May.  Not once since have I attempted any management of my husband, and yet it is a rare thing that my wish is not, as it used to be before we were married, his law.  It is wonderful, too, how he has improved.  I am sure he is not the same man that he was five years ago.  But, perhaps, I see with different eyes.  At any rate, I am not the same woman; or, if the same, very unlike what I then was.

So much for my efforts to manage a husband.  Of the three ways so faithfully tried, my fair readers will be at no loss to determine which is best.  I make these honest confessions for the good of my sex.  My husband, Mr. John Smith, will be no little surprised if this history should meet his eye.  But I do not believe it will interrupt the present harmonious relations existing between us, but rather tend to confirm and strengthen them.

RULING A WIFE.

AS a lover, Henry Lane was the kindest, most devoted, self-sacrificing person imaginable.  He appeared really to have no will of his own, so entire was his deference to his beautiful Amanda; yet, for all this, he had no very high opinion of her as an intelligent being.  She was lovely, she was gentle, she was good; and these qualities, combined with personal grace and beauty, drew him in admiration to her side, and filled him with the desire to possess her as his own.