She must know HER METIER DE
FEMME, and have a fine touch for the affections. And it is
more important that a person should be a good gossip, and
talk pleasantly and smartly of common friends and the
thousand and one nothings of the day and hour, than that
she should speak with the tongues of men and angels; for a
while together by the fire happens more frequently in
marriage than the presence of a distinguished foreigner to
dinner.... You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted;
but you must share a joke with some one else. You can
forgive people who do not follow you through a
philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing
when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you
were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a
dissolution of the marriage.
*
Now this is where there should be community between man and
wife. They should be agreed on their catchword in FACTS OF
RELIGION, OR FACTS OF SCIENCE, OR SOCIETY, MY DEAR; for
without such an agreement all intercourse is a painful
strain upon the mind....
For there are differences which no habit nor affection can
reconcile, and the Bohemian must not intermarry with the
Pharisee. Imagine Consuelo as Mrs. Samuel Budgett, the
wife of the successful merchant! The best of men and the
best of women may sometimes live together all their lives,
and, for want of some consent on fundamental questions,
hold each other lost spirits to the end.
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