If it be true that there are more people married than keep good houses, husbands are quite as much to blame as wives. The proverb tells us that good wives and good plantations are made by good husbands. In the last chapter we ventured to suggest that women should make cages as well as nets; but all their efforts will be in vain if they have ill-birds who foul their own nests. To complete the subject, therefore, something must be said about the behaviour of the male bird when caught and caged. First of all he should sing and not cry. How many women are there who suffer from the want of a kindly love, a sweet appreciation of their goodness and their self-sacrifice! How often will wives do tender and loving offices, adorn the home with flowers, making it as neat as the nest of a bird; dress their persons with elegance, and their faces with smiles, and find as a reward for this the stolid indifference of the block or the stupid insensibility of the lower animal! "She was a woman," wrote one who knew her sex well; "a woman down to the very tips of her finger-nails, and what she wanted was praise from the lips that she loved. Do you ask what that meant? Did she want gold, or dress, or power? No; all she wanted was that which will buy us all, and which so few of us ever get--in a word, it was Love." Priscilla Lammeter, in "Silas Marner," well understood the selfish way many husbands fall into of relieving their feelings: "There's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself. It's a deal the best way o' being master to let somebody else do the ordering, and keep the blaming in your own hands. It 'ud save many a man a stroke I believe." "If he would only be satisfied!" Mrs. Carlyle used sometimes to complain of Carlyle, "but I have had to learn that when he does not find fault he is pleased, and that has to content me." On one occasion when Carlyle was away from home Mrs. Carlyle described her charwoman sort of work to get all in perfect order for her husband's arrival; and when all was complete--his dinner ready, his arm-chair in its usual attitude, his pipe and tobacco prepared, all looking as comfortable as possible--Mrs. C. sat down at last to rest, and to expect him with a quiet mind. He arrived; and "after he had just greeted me, what do you think he did? He walked to the window and shook it, and asked 'Where's the wedge of the window?' and until we had found that blessed wedge nothing would content him. He said the window would rattle and spoil all." When a great and good man gives such inordinate prominence to trivial worries, how intolerable to live with must be the baser sort, who scarcely know the meaning of self-control! Some men may deserve rewards for distinguished service in action; but they certainly do not for distinguished service in passion or suffering. In this respect they are far less brave than women.