Love the gift, is love the debt.
But in this world of ours it is often hard to get one's own; and when got, our care must never cease, lest it be wrested from us. The plant you bought at the greenhouse, and that now blossoms on your window-sill, became yours by purchase, but it has required your daily care to keep it alive and persuade it to unfold its blossoms. Infinitely more delicate is this plant of love. It, too, you purchased. You gave in exchange for it your own heart. It too, you must daily tend with constant solicitude, lest it wither and die.
In this country, some women think that anything is good enough to wear at home. They go about in slatternly morning dresses, unkempt hair, and slippers down at heel. 'Nobody will see me,' they say 'but my husband.' Let them learn a lesson from the wives of the Orient.
In those countries a married woman never goes abroad except in long sombre robes and thick veil. An English lady visiting the wife of one of the wealthy merchants, found her always in full dress, with toilet as carefully arranged as if she were going to a ball.
'Why!' exclaimed the visitor, at length, 'is it possible that you take all this trouble to dress for nobody but your husband?'
'Do, then,' asked the lady in reply, 'the wives of Englishmen dress for the sake of pleasing other men?'
The visitor was mute.
Not that we would wish our women to be for ever in full costume at home. That would be alarming. But she who neglects neatness in attire, and, above all, cleanliness of person, runs a great danger of creating a sentiment of disgust in those around her. Nothing is more repugnant to the husband's senses than bad odors, and, for reasons which every woman knows, women who neglect cleanliness are peculiarly liable to them. When simple means do not remove them, recourse should be promptly had to a medical adviser.
So it is with bad breath. This sometimes arises from neglect of the teeth, sometimes from diseases of the stomach, lungs, etc. A man of delicate olfactories is almost forced to hold at arm's length a wife with a fetid breath.
There are some women—we have treated several—who are plagued with a most disagreeable perspiration, especially about the feet, the arms, etc. Such should not marry until this is cured. It is a rule among army surgeons, to be chary about giving men their discharge from military service on surgeon's certificate. But fetid feet are at times so horribly offensive, that they are considered an allowable cause for discharge. No doubt, in some of our States they would be received as a valid ground for divorce!—certainly with quite as much reason as many of the grounds usually alleged.