Your husband's elegance, Madam, is part of your duty. It is the mark of your attention or your negligence, the mark of the com-pleteness of your social maturity or of its deficiency, the mark of the abundance of your care or of its scarcity.

Yes, Madam — and this saying of mine admits of no dispute, for it is the very truth — your husband's elegance is the work of your hands, the axis of your taste, and the fruit of your encouragement and care. Why, then, do you overlook and neglect it? Is it because of your many occupations in society, or with the children, or in the kitchen, or on visits?

Have you any justification when your husband appears in a state far removed from elegance or cleanliness? Have you a sufficient excuse for his torn shirt, or his shabby jacket, or his shoes — their face disfigured, coated with dust, a part of them eaten away by time, and yet he still wears them and goes in them to the best gatherings?

Have you an excuse for the assortment of colors in which your husband goes out into the street, at war with sound taste — an assortment at which the beholder would gladly shut his eyes, to relieve them of the vex-ation that came upon them when they looked at that discordant assemblage: a loud pink shirt with greenish trousers, a brown collar, gray shoes, and a jacket whose color God alone knows? Did that assemblage not offend your own eyes before your husband left his house, and prompt you to change some of its parts — adding some, or removing some in favor of others that would suit the

trousers or the jacket or the shoes? And would this operation consume so large a part of your time that you cannot spare it for such trifles?

Did the sight of the crumpled jacket not offend your eyes, and the trousers that have gone unpressed for weeks, until in that sagging shape they ceased to be trousers at all and came to resemble the baggy sirwal that never knew a flat-iron? Did that yellowed shirt not pain you, unchanged for days despite continuous work, the dust of the streets, and the smoke of the workshops?

Did the plight of that poor wretch never pass through your mind — so little does he receive of your tenderness and of your care for his affairs — while you sat before the mirror correcting what did not please you, dressing your hair, and spending the long hours upon your adornment and your finery, so as to appear as you love

to appear, and win admiration, and draw all eyes? Have you not noticed the wide gulf and the evident difference between your appearance and the appearance of your husband or your son in the eyes of passers-by and friends? Do you not know that his disfig-ured aspect lowers the worth of your elegance, however great and complete it may be? Do you not know that your carelessness and your indifference in this respect invite criticism of you, expose your shortcoming, draw eyes upon you, and reveal the faults in you that repair-work and finery had concealed? Why, then, do you leave the gulf so wide, when you admit that your husband is a part of you and you of him? Are you content that a part of you should be disfigured and defective? Would you like two eyes, one of them beautiful and clear and the other with a mote in it? Or two legs, one slender and smooth and the other swollen with some dis-