The old gentleman's idea evidently was that, looked at merely from a material standpoint, it was worth a man's while to spend as much time caring for his wife as for his estate. She meant just as much for his happiness in the end and might mean probably more for his unhappiness. It is a very practical way of looking at the subject and perhaps the romancists might think it sordid. It must not be forgotten, however, that this is only the secondary motive suggested. At the beginning he commands him to love his wife for her own sake, and then, after suggesting the material benefit that comes from caring for her, he says that "gentleness mastereth her more than strength." Immediately after this valuable advice with regard to the care of the principal member of his household the old man turns to the question of the care of his servants. We are surely prone to think that the servant problem at least is a new development in this little world of ours. Many literary works serve to foster the impression that in the old days servants were easy to obtain, that they were always respectful, that they could readily be managed and life with them was, if not one sweet song, at least a very smooth course. Men, however, have always been men, and women and even servants have always had minds of their own, and strange as it may seem to us there has always {28} been a servant problem and there was one in Egypt 5,500 years ago. Ptah Hotep said: "Satisfy thine hired servants out of such things as thou hast; it is the duty of one that hath been favored of God. In sooth, it is hard to satisfy hired servants. For one saith, 'he is a lavish person; one knoweth not that which may come from him.' But on the morrow he thinketh, 'he is a person of exactitude (parsimony), content therein.' _And when favors have been shown unto servants, they say 'we go.'_ (Italics mine.) Peace dwelleth not in that town wherein dwell servants that are wretched." A difficult problem; presents will not solve it but only complicate it, exact justice is necessary, but the peace that follows is worth the trouble it entails. The principle would be valuable in many a squabble of corporate employer and hosts of servants in the modern time. For domestic happiness, it needed only the advice given a little later in this instruction: "Let thy face be bright what time thou livest. Bread is to be shared. He that is grasping in entertainment himself shall have an empty belly. He that causeth strife cometh himself to sorrow. Take not such a one for thy companion. It is a man's kindly acts that are remembered of him in the years after his life."