He could get no one to take the place.

This is simple fact, and it is pregnant with meaning.

Nevertheless, what if we put down the wages of your nursery-governess at the same sum you are willing to give your housekeeper - $700? Oblige me by adding up the short row of figures under your hand.

$700 450 700 $1,850

This you will please consider as the amount of your wife's salary, due from you for services rendered, exclusive of board and lodgings, which are always the portion of resident employees in your house. There is no charge for "extras," you observe. We have said nothing about the bill for nursing you through that four weeks' spell of inflammatory rheumatism last winter, or the longer siege of fever, three years ago, when this servant-of-all-work sat up with you fourteen weary nights, and would entrust the care of you to no one else. By her skillful ministrations, the miracle of her patience, love and prayers, you were rescued, say the doctors, from the close clutch of death. You cannot see the figures very distinctly while you think of it, but we agreed, at the outset, to keep feeling in the background.

You "have tried to be a kind, affectionate husband," you say, in a very unbusiness-like way.

I believe you, and so does the blessed little woman whom I have shut out from this conference, lest her foolish fondness should spoil the effect of our matter-of-fact talk. I would have you and all husbands be just, no less than loving. Let us return to our figures. The estimate is for a man of moderate means and modest home, one of the middle class which is everywhere the bone and muscle of the community - the class that makes national character, the world over. If you are wealthy, and put the care of a large and elegant establishment upon your manager, the remuneration should be in proportion. For a fancy article you have to pay a fancy price. You misunderstand your wife and me, if you imagine that we would inaugurate in your household a debit and credit system and quarter-day settlements. She would be the first to shrink from such an interpretation of your mutual relations. I should, of all your friends and well-wishers, be the last to recommend it.

But I have studied this matter long and seriously, and I offer you as the result of my observation in various walks of life, and careful calculation of labor and expense, the bold assertion that every wife who performs her part, even tolerably well, in whatever rank of society, more than earns her living, and that this should be an acknowledged fact with both parties to the marriage contract. The idea of her dependence upon her husband is essentially false and mischievous, and should be done away with, at once and forever. It has crushed self-respect out of thousands of women; it has scourged thousands from the marriage-altar to the tomb, with a whip of scorpions; it has driven many to desperation and crime.

"Every dollar is a lash!" I once overheard a wife say, in bitter soliloquy, as her husband left her presence after placing in her hand the money for which she had timidly asked him, to pay the weekly household bills.

Then, still supposing herself unseen, she threw the roll of bank-notes upon the floor and trampled it under foot, in a transport of impotent, and, to my way of thinking, righteous wrath.

"An exceptional case?" I beg your pardon! I wish it were. Her husband meant to be kind and affectionate as honestly as do you. When money was "easy," he would give it to her freely and cheerfully, provided his mood was propitious at the time of her application. He had expended large sums in the purchase of jewelry and handsome clothing for her, and exulted in seeing her arrayed in them. He loved her truly, and was proud of her. His mistake was in ignoring the fact that he owed her anything in actual dollars and cents; that she worked for her livelihood as faithfully as did he, and that his debt to her was, in the highest degree, a "confidential" one. If put into the confessional, he would have admitted that he thought of himself as the only bread-winner of the family, and was, sometimes, tartly intolerant of the domestic demands upon his earnings. He made a yet grosser mistake in feeling and behaving as if the money deposited in her hands for the current expenses of the establishment, were a gift to her personally. This is a masculine blunder that poisons the happiness of more women than I like to think of, or you would be willing to believe. Be kindly-affectioned as you will, your wife cannot respect you thoroughly if she sees that you are habitually unreasonable and unjust. And it is neither just nor rational to speak and act as if all the butter, flour, sugar, meat and sundries which she saves you the trouble of buying, and of which, nine times out of ten, she is the more judicious purchaser, were to be consumed by her, and her alone.

"You never thought of such a thing!" you protest betwixt laughter and vexation.

Then, do not act as if it were your settled conviction.

Set aside from your income what you adjudge to be a reasonable and liberal sum for the maintenance of your family in the style suitable for people of your means and position. Determine what purchases you will yourself make, and what shall be intrusted to your wife, and put the money needed for her proportion into her care as frankly as you take charge of your share. Try the experiment of talking to her as if she were a business partner. Let her understand what you can afford to do, and what you cannot. If in this explanation you can say, "we," and "ours," you will gain a decided moral advantage, although it may be at the cost of masculine prejudice and pride of power. Impress upon her mind that a certain sum, made over to her apart from the rest, is hers absolutely. Not a present from you, but her honest earnings, and that you would not be honest were you to withhold it. And do not ask her "if that will do?" any more than you would address the question to any other workwoman. (With what cordial detestation wives regard that brief query, which drops, like a sentence of the creed, from husbandly lips, I leave your spouse to tell you. Also, if she ever heard of a woman who answered anything but "yes.")