"The truth is," adds the same writer, "that the greatest security of all against jealousy in a wife is to show, to _prove_ by your acts, by your words also, but more especially by your _acts_, that you prefer her to all the world; and I know of no act that is, in this respect, equal to spending in her company every moment of your leisure time. Everybody knows, and young wives better than anybody else, that people, who can choose, will be where they like best to be, and that they will be along with those whose company they like best. The matter is very plain; and I do beseech you to bear it in mind. Nor do I see the use, or sense, of keeping a great deal of company as it is called. What company can a man and woman want more than their two selves, and their children, if they have any? If here be not company enough, it is but a sad affair. This hankering after company proves, clearly proves, that you want something beyond the society of your wife; and _that_ she is sure to feel most acutely; the bare fact contains an imputation against her, and it is pretty sure to lay the foundation of jealousy, or of something still worse."
Addressed, as these sentiments are, to the husband, they are equally applicable to the wife; and on the part of domestic happiness, we urge upon our readers, all, to prove their constancy of attachment, by mutual kind offices and delicate attentions, in health and in sickness, in joy and in sorrow; by abstinence from all that may wound; and by an honest preference of _home_ enjoyments above all other enjoyments.
But to keep alive this honest preference, there must be,--in addition to other good qualifications which have heretofore passed under review,
1. _Constant cheerfulness and good humour._ A wife and mother who is perpetually fretful and peevish; who has nothing to utter to her husband when he returns from his daily occupation, whatever it may be, or to her children when they are assembled around her, but complaints of her hard lot and miserable destiny; who is always brooding over past sorrows, or anticipating future evils; does all she can, unconsciously it may be, to make her hearth desolate, and to mar for ever domestic happiness. And the husband and father who brings to that hearth a morose frown, or a gloomy brow; who silences the prattling tongue of infancy by a stern command; who suffers the annoyances and cares of life to cut into his heart's core, and refuses to be comforted or charmed by the thousand endearments of her whom he has sworn to love and cherish; such a one does not deserve domestic happiness.