Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/192

162 pardon and blessing for going my own way; the next, to pray for a child to comfort me when he is absent and cannot take me; and, thirdly, to set to work with a good heart to work for an appointment or other means of living. We must do any amount of study and publishing, take society in moderation as a treat; we must do good according to our means; and when successful we will travel. My rules as a wife are as follows:


 * "1. Let your husband find in you a companion, friend, and adviser, and confidante, that he may miss nothing at home; and let him find in the wife what he and many other men fancy is only to be found in a mistress, that he may seek nothing out of his home.


 * "2. Be a careful nurse when he is ailing, that he may never be in low spirits about his health without a serious cause.


 * "3. Make his home snug. If it be ever so small and poor, there can always be a certain chic about it. Men are always ashamed of a poverty-stricken home, and therefore prefer the club. Attend much to his creature comforts; allow smoking or anything else; for if you do not, somebody else will. Make it yourself cheerful and attractive, and draw relations and intimates about him, and the style of society (literati) that suits him, marking who are real friends to him and who are not.


 * "4. Improve and educate yourself in every way, that you may enter into his pursuits and keep pace with the times, that he may not weary of you.