It is not enough that you have secured, in the heart of your wife, respect for your spiritual and intellectual manhood. To maintain your self-respect in your relations with her, to perfect your growth and happiness as a husband, you must cause your _physical_ nature to be tenderly cherished and reverenced by her in all the sacred intimacies of home. No matter how much she reverences your intellectual, or your social power, if she shrinks with disgust from all contact with your person, if by reason of your uncalled-for passional manifestations, you have made your physical manhood disagreeable, and all personal contact painful, how can you, in her presence, preserve a sense of manly pride and dignity as a husband? You cannot, if you respect yourself. One distinctive characteristic of a true and noble husband is a feeling of manly pride in the physical elements of his manhood. His physical manhood, as well as his soul, is dear to the heart of his wife, because through this he can give the fullest expression to his manly power. But if such manifestations are made when the wife is not prepared to receive them, and when she repels them and dreads the consequences, his physical nature becomes associated, not with the pure joy of a longed-for maternity, but with a deep sense of shame and degradation, with an outrage on her nature, and with the protracted suffering and anguish of an abhorred maternity. How can she respect the person of her husband? How can she cherish, and proudly care for, the purity, health and comfort of his physical nature? He has made it disgusting to her. She regards it as the deadliest enemy of her purity and peace as a wife, and as the bane of her home. She cannot look upon his person but as the source of her degradation and ruin. In its presence, she feels as in the presence of some hated reptile, from which her soul and senses shrink. How can she lovingly cherish and care for it? How can the husband respect himself, when by his own abuse of his wife and of himself, he has made his physical manhood thus contemptible to her? How can you, my friend, avoid this? How can you secure for your person the loving care and respect of your wife? There is but one way; so manifest yourself to her, in the hours of your most endearing intimacies, that all your manly power shall be associated only with all that is generous, just and noble in you, and with purity, freedom and happiness in her. Make her feel that all which constitutes you a man, and qualifies you to be her husband and the father of her children, belongs to her, and is sacredly consecrated to the perfection and happiness of her nature. Do this, and the happiness of your home is made complete in righteousness. Your _body_ will be lovingly and reverently cared for, because the wife of your bosom feels that it is the sacred symbol through which a noble, manly love is ever speaking to her, to cheer and sustain her.