I charge you, also, make yourself the intelligent companion of your
husband. What with these floods of newspapers and books there is no
excuse for the wife's ignorance either about the present or the past.
If you have no more than a half-hour every day to yourself you may
fill your mind with entertaining and useful knowledge. Let the
merchant's wife read up on all mercantile questions, and the
mechanic's wife on all that pertains to his style of work, and the
professional man's wife on all the legal, or medical, or theological,
or political discussions of the day. It is very stupid for a man,
after having been amid active minds all day, to find his wife without
information or opinions on anything. If the wife knows nothing about
what is going on in the world, after the tea-hour has passed, and the
husband has read the newspaper, he will have an engagement and must
"go and see a man." In nine cases out of ten when a man does not stay
at home in the evening, unless positive duty calls him away, it is
because there is nothing to stay for. He would rather talk with his
wife than anyone else if she could talk as well.