“Well, you see what your principle leads to, carried out,” said Jennie. “If home is merely the place where one may feel at liberty to be tired or dull or disagreeable, without losing one’s character, I think the women have far more right to avail themselves of the liberty than the men; for all the lonesome, dull, disagreeable part of home-life comes into their department. It is they who must keep awake with the baby, if it frets; and if they do not feel spirits to make an attractive toilette in the morning, or have not the airy, graceful fancies that they had when they were girls, it is not so very much against them. A housekeeper and nursery-maid cannot be expected to be quite as elegant in her toilette and as entertaining in her ways as a girl without a care in her father’s house; but I think that this is no excuse for husbands neglecting the little civilities and attentions which they used to show before marriage. They are strong and well and hearty; go out into the world and hear and see a great deal that keeps their minds moving and awake; and they ought to entertain their wives after marriage just as their wives entertained them before. That’s the way my husband must do, or I will never have one,--and it will be small loss, if I don’t,” said Miss Jennie. “Well,” said Bob, “I must endeavor to initiate Charley Sedley in time.” “Charley Sedley, Bob!” said Jennie, with crimson indignation. “I wonder you will always bring up that old story, when I’ve told you a hundred times how disagreeable it is! Charley and I are good friends, but--” “There, there,” said Bob, “that will do; you don’t need to proceed further.” “You only said that because you couldn’t answer my argument,” said Jennie. “Well, my dear,” said Bob, “you know everything has two sides to it, and I’ll admit that you have brought up the opposite side to mine quite handsomely; but, for all that, I am convinced, that, if what I said was not really the truth, yet the truth lies somewhere in the vicinity of it. As I said before, so I say again, true love ought to beget a freedom which shall do away with the necessity of ceremony, and much may and ought to be tolerated among near and dear friends that would be discourteous among strangers. I am just as sure of this as of anything in the world.” “And yet,” said my wife, “there is certainly truth in the much quoted lines of Cowper, on Friendship, where he says,-- “As similarity of mind, Or something not to be defined, First fixes our attention, So manners decent and polite, The same we practised at first sight, Will save it from declension.”