The labourer is surely worthy of his hire; and the wife, upon whose shoulders the domestic load presses most heavily, is as justly entitled to her payment as her housemaid, whose duties are more clearly defined. Some high-flown personages may think this a very gross view of the case, and say, perchance, that where love is there can never be any hardship felt. But I know that I touch upon what is a sore point with many women, and I can only hope that if any stingy husbands read these words they will try a little experiment on their own account, and see how the unexpected gift of a little money, offered lovingly, can bring the light back to eyes which have grown a little weary, and smooth the lines away from a brow which care has wrinkled before its time. The ideal husband we are considering will also be a home-keeping husband. Let me not here be misunderstood. No sensible woman will desire to keep her husband always at her side, nor can any woman make a more profound mistake than to try and wean the man she has married away from all his old friends and associations. I am speaking of good men, of course, whose friends and associations are such as she need not regard with apprehension. Yet it is a mistake which many women make, and it is a common saying with the bachelors who may miss a certain bright spirit from their midst, "Oh, nobody ever sees him now, he's married!" And there is a peculiar emphasis on the last word which you must hear to appreciate, but it signifies that he is as good as dead. Now why should this be? The wise wife, instead of being so small-minded and jealous, should try to remember that there is a side of man's nature which demands sympathy and contact with his own sex--and also that her husband knew and loved these old friends of his perhaps before he ever saw her. Let her try instead to make them all so welcome in her home that they will come and come again, and instead of pitying her husband because he has got his head into a noose will go away thinking him a lucky fellow. This is not an impossibility. It can be done. But while this husband of ours does not give up his old friends of his own sex, nor abjure all the manly pursuits and recreations so dear to his soul in his state of bachelorhood, he will take care that they do not absorb an undue share of his leisure, but will prefer home and wife to them all, and _let her know it_. He will not be above expressing his satisfaction when his home suddenly strikes him with more force than usual as being the sweetest place on earth; he will say so just as frankly as he finds fault when there is just cause for complaint; and she will return it by a loving interest pressed down and running over, or I am neither woman nor wife.