FORCED SMILES.
On your arrival in this latitude, you enjoy numerous little scenes, which, in the grand opera of marriage, represent the intermezzos, and of which the following is a type:
You are one evening alone after dinner, and you have been so often alone already that you feel a desire to say sharp little things to each other, like this, for instance:
“Take care, Caroline,” says Adolphe, who has not forgotten his many vain efforts to please her. “I think your nose has the impertinence to redden at home quite well as at the restaurant.”
“This is not one of your amiable days!”
General Rule.—No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.
“Perhaps it’s because you are laced too tight. Women make themselves sick that way.”
The moment a man utters these words to a woman, no matter whom, that woman,—who knows that stays will bend,—seizes her corset by the lower end, and bends it out, saying, with Caroline:
“Look, you can get your hand in! I never lace tight.”
“Then it must be your stomach.”