“I think that we of the English race may set it down as a general rule, that we are in no danger of becoming hypocrites in domestic life through an extra sense of politeness, and in some danger of becoming boors from a rough, uncultivated instinct of sincerity. But to bring the matter to a practical point, I will specify some particulars in which the courtesy we show to strangers might with advantage be grafted into our home-life. “In the first place, then, let us watch our course when we are entertaining strangers whose good opinion we wish to propitiate. We dress ourselves with care, we study what it will be agreeable to say, we do not suffer our natural laziness to prevent our being very alert in paying small attentions, we start across the room for an easier chair, we stoop to pick up the fan, we search for the mislaid newspaper, and all this for persons in whom we have no particular interest beyond the passing hour; while with those friends whom we love and respect we too often sit in our old faded habiliments, and let them get their own chair, and look up their own newspaper, and fight their own way daily, without any of this preventing care. “In the matter of personal adornment, especially, there are a great many people who are chargeable with the same fault that I have already spoken of in reference to household arrangements. They have a splendid wardrobe for company, and a shabby and sordid one for domestic life. A woman puts all her income into party-dresses, and thinks anything will do to wear at home. All her old tumbled finery, her frayed, dirty silks and soiled ribbons, are made to do duty for her hours of intercourse with her dearest friends. Some seem to be really principled against wearing a handsome dress in every-day life; they ‘cannot afford’ to be well-dressed in private. Now what I should recommend would be to take the money necessary for one or two party-dresses and spend it upon an appropriate and tasteful home-toilette, and to make it an avowed object to look prettily at home. “We men are a sort of stupid, blind animals: we know when we are pleased, but we don’t know what it is that pleases us; we say we don’t care anything about flowers, but if there is a flower-garden under our window, somehow or other we are dimly conscious of it, and feel that there is something pleasant there; and so when our wives and daughters are prettily and tastefully attired, we know it, and it gladdens our life far more than we are perhaps aware of.” “Well, Papa,” said Jennie, “I think the men ought to take just as much pains to get themselves up nicely after marriage as the women. I think there are such things as tumbled shirt-collars and frowzy hair and muddy shoes brought into the domestic sanctuary, as well as frayed silks and dirty ribbons.”