"You never saw a husband yet, that wasn't as docile as a lamb when everything went to his mind. Don't they always love and cherish their wives as long as there is a timber left of them? Wouldn't they extinguish the lamp of life for any man, or woman, who dare say a word to their dispraise? Would they ever do that same themselves? Answer me that?
"And as to wives; they are as easily driven as a flock of sheep when a locomotive comes tearing past. Oh! y-e-s, Sambo, matrimony is a 'blessed institution,' so the ministers say, (finds 'em in fees, you know!) and so everybody says—except those who have tried it? So go away, and don't be wool-gathering. You'll never be the 'Uncle Tom' of your tribe."
XXXVI.
A WHISPER TO ROMANTIC YOUNG LADIES.
"A crust of bread, a pitcher of water, a thatched roof, and love,—there's happiness for you."
Girls! that's a humbug! The very thought of it makes me groan. It's all moonshine. In fact, men and moonshine in my dictionary are synonymous.
"Water and a crust! RATHER spare diet! May do for the honey-moon. Don't make much difference then, whether you eat shavings or sardines—but when you return to substantials, and your wedding dress is put away in a trunk for the benefit of posterity, if you can get your husband to smile on anything short of a 'sirloin' or a roast turkey, you are a lucky woman.
"Don't every married woman know that a man is as savage as a New Zealander when he's hungry? and when he comes home to an empty cupboard and meets a dozen little piping mouths, (necessary accompaniments of 'cottages' and 'love,' clamorous for supper, 'Love will have the sulks,' or my name isn't Fanny. Lovers have a trick of getting disenchanted, too, when they see their Aramintas with dresses pinned up round the waist, hair powdered with sweeping, faces scowled up over the wash-tub, and soap-suds dripping from red elbows.
"We know these little accidents never happen in novels—where the heroine is always 'dressed in white, with a rose-bud in her hair,' and lives on blossoms and May dew! There are no wash-tubs or gridirons in her cottage; her children are born cherubim, with a seraphic contempt for dirt pies and molasses. She remains 'a beauty' to the end of the chapter, and 'steps out' just in time to anticipate her first gray hair, her husband drawing his last breath at the same time, as a dutiful husband should; and not falling into the unromantic error of outliving his grief, and marrying a second time!
"But this humdrum life, girls, is another affair, with its washing and ironing and cleaning days, when children expect boxed ears, and visitors picked-up dinners. All the 'romance' there is in it, you can put under a three-cent piece!