She feels that she is to some extent responsible for him, not only in the home, but in the outer world: to the wise fairy who orders his domestic interior she adds the character of interpreter whose aim is to reveal his promising social exterior to a possibly unappreciative audience, much in the manner that a bilingual Hottentot, producing a white man before his tribe, would give them to understand that he came in every way up to the best Hottentot standards of good manners and capability. In the same spirit she is ever ready to act as his shock-absorber, ready to undergo every compression on her own part for the sake of his smoother daily progress. A man, though he might naturally wish to do so, cannot act as a buffer for his wife except in the greater shocks of life where the strain on the joint machine is much eased by any elasticity on his part: the smaller jars and jolts occur in the home where he is inevitably the passenger. It is she upon whom falls the daily impact of breakages, leakages of domestic energy, minor and unceasing adjustments and all the host of inquiries which may be generically described as the "Pleas’m"s. If she is occasionally exasperated at the complacency with which he receives the service, she has the good sense to reflect that if the passenger were continually worrying about the feelings of the springs he would never have the heart to drive anywhere at all; and, since he is unavoidably there in the seat, it is better that he should get up some momentum than subject the springs to the motionless pressure of his own dead weight.