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332 the household—a source which I would gladly pass over if duty did not compel me to notice it, owing as it is to the sedulous and tender care taken by the devoted, anxious partner of his life, who in secret has long noted and grieved over her lord's declining health and force. She observes that he is now more fatigued than formerly after the labors of the day, is less vigorous for business, for exercise, or for sport, less energetic every way in design and execution. She naturally desires to see him stronger, to sustain the enfeebled power which age is necessarily undermining; and with her there is but one idea, and it is practically embodied in one method—viz., to increase his force by augmenting his nourishment! She remonstrates at every meal at what she painfully feels is the insufficient portion of food he consumes. He pleads in excuse, almost with the consciousness of guilt, that he has really eaten all that appetite permits, but he is besought with plaintive voice and affectionate entreaty "to try and take a little more," and, partly to stay the current of gentle complaint, partly to gratify his companion, and partly, as with a faint internal sigh he may confess to himself, "for peace and comfort's sake," he assents, and with some violence to his nature forces his palate to comply, thus adding a slight burden to the already satiated stomach. Or if, perchance, endowed with a less compliant nature, he is churlish enough to decline the proffered advice, and even to question the value of a cup of strong beef-tea, or egg whipped up with sherry, which unsought has pursued him to his study, or been sent to his office between eleven and twelve of the forenoon, and which he knows by experience must if swallowed inevitably impair an appetite for lunch, then not improbably he will fall a victim to his solicitous helpmeet's well-meaning designs in some other shape. There is the tasteless calf's-foot jelly, of which a portion may be surreptitiously introduced into a bowl of tea with small chance that its presence will be detected, especially if accompanied by a good modicum of cream; or the little cup of cocoa or of coffee masking an egg well beaten and smoothly blended to tempt the palate—types of certain small diplomatic exercises, delightful, first, because they are diplomatic and not direct in execution; and, secondly, because the supporting system has been triumphantly maintained, my lord's natural and instinctive objections thereto notwithstanding.

But the loving wife—for whom my sympathy is not more profound than is my sorrow for her almost incurable error in relation to this single department of her duty—is by no means the only source of fallacious counsel to the man whose strength is slowly declining with age. We might almost imagine him to be the object of a conspiracy, so numerous are the temptations which beset him on every side. The daily and weekly journals display column after column of advertisements, enumerating all manner of edibles and drinkables, and loudly trumpeting their virtues, the chief of which is always declared to be the abundance of some quality averred to be at once medicinal and