"Oh, you must be patient with him," I said. "Think how much he gives you; home, name, support, protection—everything. He works hard for you every day. You are under tremendous obligations to him."
"Well, if you put it that way—" she answered resentfully, "but don't I give him love and affection in return?"
"Yes," I countered triumphantly, "but he gives you equal love and all these other things beside. It seems to me there's no question who gives most."
She opened her eyes rather wide and looked thoughtful.
July 17.
The Ideal Husband.
It being the "silly season" a controversy is raging in the daily papers as to the ideal wife and the ideal husband, and much correspondence is occurring under various anonyms.
Alas!—the only ideal husband who ever lived married the only ideal wife ever born. They were cut off in the flower of their youth—some time during the first years of the Pliocene Period—and minute fossil fragments of their bones are now worn as relics by pious celibates, and are said to have worked miracles.
Of so potent an essence are their mere memories, it is said his knightly ghost haunts the rosy chambers of all maiden dreams, and men seeking Her like find all other women less desirable because of her fabled virtues.
I suppose all girls see him more or less in their lovers. Imagination deceptively moulds their features to a similacrum of that noble legendary person, until the fierce light which beats upon the married reveals the unprepossessing traits of plain everyday humanity. Yet every woman begins her sentimental life with hopes unabated by the depressing failures of others.