I hope, my sister, you have married a man as Christian and as well
balanced as that. But even if you were worsted in conjugal bargain,
you cannot be worse off than this Abigail in my text. Her husband was
cross and ungrateful, an inebriate, for on the very evening after her
heroic achievement at the foot of the hill, where she captured a whole
regiment with her genial and strategic behaviour, she returned home
and found her husband so drunk that she could not tell him the story,
but had to postpone it until the next day. So, my sister, I do not
want you to keep saying within yourself as I proceed: "That is the way
to treat a perfect husband;" for you are to remember that no wife was
ever worse swindled than this Abigail of my text. At the other end of
her table sat a mean, selfish, snarling, contemptible sot, and if she
could do so well for a dastard, how ought you to do with that princely
and splendid man with whom you are to walk the path of life?
First, I counsel the wife to remember in what a severe and terrific
battle of life her husband is engaged. Whether in professional, or
commercial, or artistic, or mechanical life, your husband from morning
to night is in a Solferino, if not a Sedan. It is a wonder that your
husband has any nerves or patience or suavity left. To get a living in
this next to the last decade of the nineteenth century is a struggle.
If he come home and sit down preoccupied, you ought to excuse him. If
he do not feel like going out that night for a walk or entertainment,
remember he has been out all day. You say he ought to leave at his
place of business his annoyances and come home cheery. But if a man
has been betrayed by a business partner, or a customer has cheated him
out of a large bill of goods, or a protested note has been flung on
his desk, or somebody has called him a liar, and everything has gone
wrong from morning till night, he must have great genius and
forgetfulness if he do not bring some of the perplexity home with him.
When you tell me he ought to leave it all at the store or bank or
shop, you might as well tell a storm on the Atlantic to stay out there
and not touch the coast or ripple the harbor.