You have more strength in your _Looks_, than we in our _Laws_, and more power by your _Tears_, than we have by our _Arguments_. The difficulties a wife may meet are fully recognized and the best ways of surmounting them are suggested. Is her husband unfaithful? The wife's proper task is Discretion, Silence, affected Ignorance. Does he drink to excess? Let her reflect that the fault is too common to be fatal to happiness. Is he ill-humored? The wife has but to mark "how the Wheels of such a Man's Head are used to move" and she can manage him at her will. Is he sullen? Watch for "the first Appearances of Cloudy Weather and be wary till the Fit shall pass." Possibly he may be a "Close-handed Wretch." This calls forth all a Wife's powers. She must use kindness, play on his ambition and vanity, using now and then even "a Dose of Wine to open up a narrow Mind." A weak and incompetent husband may become, in the hands of "a dexterous woman," even an asset of some value. She must, of course, pay deference to him in public, but she can easily see to it that he is really under her control. "Such a Fool is a dangerous Beast, if others have the keeping of him; and you must be very undexterous if when your Husband shall resolve to be an _Ass_, you do not take care he may be _your Ass_." Marriage is but a prolonged fencing-bout of wits. The woman works under unavoidable handicaps, but if she is sufficiently adroit, if she is mistress of artifice, if she knows the tricks of the game, she may emerge from the conflict substantially victorious. The book was written in all seriousness and with tender love for the daughter Elizabeth for whose guidance it was intended. She is said to have prized it highly and to have kept it always on her table. Elizabeth was married early to the third Earl of Chesterfield who evidently had a humorous appreciation of the book, for he wrote on the fly-leaf "Labour in vain." [Sidenote: A Dialogue concerning Women (1691)] In 1691 there appeared _A Dialogue concerning Women, Being a Defence of the Sex. Written to Eugenia by W. Walsh._ The Preface by John Dryden says of women: "For my own part, who have always been their Servant, and have never drawn my Pen against them, I had rather see some of them prais'd extraordinarily, than any of them suffer by detraction: And that in this Age, and at this time particularly, wherein I find more Heroines than Heroes." The dialogue is between Misogynes and Philogynes: Misogynes brings up Solomon, Euripides, Simonides, Lucian, St. Chrysostom, and Juvenal, the Epigrammatists, Comick Poets, and Satyrists, as a dreadful array of the ancients against women, showing at least that these ancients "had a very commendable faculty of calling Names." Misogynes especially dislikes "the Learned Woman, who runs mad for the love of hard words, who talks a mixt Jargon, or _Lingua Franca_, and has spent a great deal of time to make her capable of talking Nonsense in four or five different languages."[422]