No! She has willingly accepted a responsibility. It is her duty to bear it loyally, faithfully, uncomplainingly to the end.
Let us sum up with the maxim, that the husband should be the senior, but that the difference of age should not be more than ten years.
It is often hard to make out what doctors mean by _temperaments_. It is supposed that our mental and physical characters depend somehow on the predominance of some organ or system which controls the rest. Thus a person who is nervous, quick, sensitive to impressions, is said to have a _nervous_ temperament; one who is stout, full-blooded, red-faced, has a _sanguine_ temperament; a thin, dark-featured, reticent person, is of a _bilious_ temperament; while a pale, fat, sluggish nature, is called _phlegmatic_, or _lymphatic._
In a general way these distinctions are valuable, but they will not bear very exact applications. They reveal in outline the constitution of mind and body; and what is to our present purpose, they are of more than usual importance in the question of selecting a husband.
Nature, hating incongruity, yet loves variety. She preserves the limits of species, but within those limits she seeks fidelity to one type. Therefore it is that in marriage a person inclines strongly to one of a different temperament--to a person quite unlike himself.
So true is this, that a Frenchman of genius, Bernardin de St. Pierre, vouches for this anecdote of himself. He was in a strange city, visiting a friend whom he had not seen for years. The friend's sister was of that age when women are most susceptible. She was tall, a blonde, deliberate in motion, with blue eyes and fair hair. In a jesting way, St. Pierre, who had never seen her before, and knew nothing of her personal life, said,--
'Mademoiselle, you have many admirers. Shall I describe him on whom you look with most favor?'
'He is short in stature, of dark complexion, dark hair and eyes, slight in figure, active and nervous in all his movements.'
The lady blushed to her eyes, and cast a glance of anger at her brother, who, she thought, had betrayed her secret. But no! St. Pierre's only informant was his deep knowledge of the human heart.
This instinct is founded upon the truth that the perfect temperament is that happily balanced one which holds all the organs in equilibrium,--in which no one rules, where all are developed in proportion. Nature ever strives to realize this ideal. She instills in the nervous temperament a preference for the lymphatic; in the sanguine, a liking for the bilious constitution. The offspring should combine the excellencies of both, the defects of neither. We do well to heed her admonitions here, and to bear in mind that those matches which combine opposite temperaments, are, as a rule, the most fortunate.