Keep out of the fire.
There is no reason why you should scar yourself or smoke your garments while keeping comfortably warm.
To Mr. Charles Gordon
Concerning the Jealousy of His Wife After Seven Years of Married Life
I have read your letter with care. I can readily understand that you would not appeal to your wife's mother in this matter upon which you write me, as she has been the typical mother-in-law,—the woman who never gets along well with her children, and who never wants others to succeed where she fails. I recollect your telling me how she marred the wedding ceremony, by weeping and fainting, after having nagged her poor daughter during twenty years of life, and interfered with her friendships, through that peculiar jealousy which she misnamed "devoted love."
And now you are afraid that your wife is developing the same propensity, and you ask me to use my influence to cure her of it in its incipiency. You think I stand closer to Edna than any other friend.
"It is only during the last two or three years that Edna has shown this tendency," you say. "Until then she seemed to me the most sensible and liberal-minded of women, always admiring the people I liked, and even going out of her way to be courteous and cordial to a woman I praised. Of late she has seemed so different, and has often been sarcastic, or sulky, or hysterical, when I showed the common gallantries of a man fond of the society of ladies."
You think it is her inherited tendency cropping out, and that she is unconscious of it herself.