Wifehood, like all assured conditions, does not need to be buttressed up; but a less certain position must be supported from the outside, and an insecure self-respect, an uncertain holding, must be perpetually strengthened and reassured. Women who cannot live happily without being made love to are more like mistresses than wives, and come but badly off in the great struggles of life and the cruel handling of time. Placing all their happiness in things which cannot continue, they let slip that which lies in their hands; and in their desire to retain the romantic position of lovers lose the sweet security of wives. Perhaps, if they had higher aims in life than those with which they make shift to satisfy themselves, they would not let themselves sink to the level of this folly, and would understand better than they do now the worth of realities as contrasted with appearances. And yet we cannot but pity the poor, weak, craving souls who long so pitifully for the freshness of the morning to continue far into the day and evening--who cling so tenaciously to the fleeting romance of youth. They are taken by the glitter of things--love-making among the rest; and the man who is showiest in his affection, who can express it with most colour, and paint it, so to speak, with the minutest touches, is the man whose love seems to them the most trustworthy and the most intense. They make the mistake of confounding this show with the substance, of trusting to pictorial expression rather than to solid facts. And they make that other mistake of cloying their husbands with half-childish caresses which were all very well in the early days, but which become tiresome as time goes on and the gravity of life deepens. And then, when the man either quietly keeps them off or more brusquely repels them, they are hurt and miserable, and think the whole happiness of their lives is dead, and all that makes marriage beautiful at an end. What is to be done to balance things evenly in this unequal world of sex? What indeed, is to be done at any time to reconcile strength with weakness, and to give each its due? One thing at least is sure. The more thoroughly women learn the true nature of men, the fewer mistakes they will make and the less unhappiness they will create for themselves; and the more patient men are with the hysterical excitability, the restless craving, which nature, for some purpose at present unknown, has made the special temperament of women, the fewer _femmes incomprises_ there will be in married homes and the larger the chance of married happiness. All one's theories of domestic life come down at last to the give-and-take system, to bearing and forbearing, and meeting half way idiosyncrasies which one does not personally share. _SOCIAL NOMADS._