Later on the wife develops an ideal less magnificently ornamental than this choice collection of bric-à-brac virtues. The married idol must be thoroughly domesticated: prepared to throw himself with enthusiasm into the study of croup and measles; is deeply versed in the matter of female domestic service, and yet so full of tact as to be able to obliterate himself at moments of domestic crisis. Like the ideal servant, he must be never in the way and never out of it. He must be uncritical of failure, yet capable of enthusiasm for success; unselfish as a saint, yet commanding the secret of worldly achievement; and above all he must be hopelessly blind to the virtues and charms of every woman but his wife.
Taste as to details may differ according to temperament, nationality, and social condition, but, broadly speaking, this delightful person with his eccentric combination of qualities figures in the abstract affections of all women.
But these are dreams; diversions of those pleasant moments when the human moth allows itself, with futile richness of imagination, to consider the star as a possible companion, and it seems useless to hope that such a person will ever appear in this sinful and unworthy world.
Perhaps from time to time a man who faintly reflects the luminous charms of this knightly husband-saint does arise to cheer and comfort the weaker sex and keep their hopes and ideals alive, but the "Mauds," and "Charlottes," and "Mrs. S. F. J.s," who have been extolling his attractions in print, seem not to have prayerfully considered whether they themselves were fit mates for, or capable of satisfying the ideals of, this wholly impossible he. There is far less talk about the ideal wife--for two reasons, I suppose. One is that men have less time for chattering generalizations, and the other--alas!--is that men are far less interested in women than are women in men.
The American is supposed to more nearly approach this high standard than the men of any other nationality, but that typical American husband of novels has, I must confess, always seemed to me a paltry, bourgeois creature, with the soul of a bank clerk, a neglected mind, and with a low estimate and a sort of amused indulgence of women as pretty, fantastic, inconsequent children with an insane greed of luxury.