“But _I_ won’t have any such scenes with _my_ wife,” says Don Positivo. “I won’t marry one of your clever women; they are always positive and disagreeable. _I_ look for a wife of a gentle and yielding nature, that shall take her opinions from me, and accommodate her tastes to mine.” And so Don Positivo goes and marries a pretty little pink-and-white concern, so lisping and soft and delicate that he is quite sure she cannot have a will of her own. She is the moon of his heavens, to shine only by his reflected light. We would advise our gentlemen friends who wish to enjoy the felicity of having their own way not to try the experiment with a pretty fool; for the obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity. Let our friend once get in the seat opposite to him at table a pretty creature who cries for the moon, and insists that he don’t love her because he doesn’t get it for her; and in vain may he display his superior knowledge of astronomy, and prove to her that the moon is not to be got. She listens with her head on one side, and after he has talked himself quite out of breath, repeats the very same sentence she began the discussion with, without variation or addition. If she wants darling Johnny taken away from school, because cruel teachers will not give up the rules of the institution for his pleasure, in vain does Don Positivo, in the most select and superior English, enlighten her on the necessity of habits of self-control and order for a boy,--the impossibility that a teacher should make exceptions for their particular darling,--the absolute, perishing need that the boy should begin to do something. She hears him all through, and then says, “I don’t know anything about that. I know what I want; I want Johnny taken away.” And so she weeps, sulks, storms, entreats, lies awake nights, has long fits of sick-headache,--in short, shows that a pretty animal, without reason or cultivation, can be, in her way, quite as formidable an antagonist as the most clever of her sex. Leander can sometimes vanquish his Hero in fair fight by the weapons of good logic, because she is a woman capable of appreciating reason, and able to feel the force of the considerations he adduces; and when he does vanquish and carry her captive by his bow and spear, he feels that he has gained a victory over no ignoble antagonist, and he becomes a hero in his own eyes. Though a woman of much will, still she is a woman of much reason; and if he has many vexations with her pertinacity, he is never without hope in her good sense; but alas for him whose wife has only the animal instinct of firmness, without any development of the judgment or reasoning faculties! The conflicts with a woman whom a man respects and admires are often extremely trying; but the conflicts with one whom he cannot help despising, become in the end simply disgusting.