as a general thing, is anything but a "bed of roses," as is demonstrated in a thousand ways daily in every section of the land. Disgust, discontent, hidden grief, and a hundred real and imaginary evils and wrongs, are constantly paling the cheeks and dimming the eyes of scores of thousands of wives in this our fair and vast domain. It is certain that scores of thousands of wives perish yearly, — victims of thoughtlessness on the part of others and themselves too. They have failed to fortify themselves — their nerves and constitutions — against the excessive drainage to which too many of them are exposed. A very little knowledge of the right sort would enable them to successfully do this, and no one be the wiser for, or the loser by, it. Never shall I forget the terrible impression made upon me by the account of a young wife's dying bed, told to me by Mrs. Reed, of Boston: a fair young creature, — a gazelle, — mated with a brutal elephant, — a thing shaped like a man, but who had no more real manhood than a wild buffalo. Now, had that murdered wife — a victim to Christian marriage — been wise, as she might have been, she could have preserved her life and health in spite of the thing that called himself her husband.
2d. Women, when afflicted, frequently become the victims of charlatanry and medical mal-practice to an alarming extent, and it is an open question whether the outrageous exposures, operations, indelicate manipulations, heroic drugging, and unmanly, unscientific, and inhuman treatment generally, to which they are subject, are not more fatal and injurious, in the result, than the original disease sought to be remedied! I hold the man, physician or not, who unnecessarily violates the holy sanctities of woman, and rudely assails her delicacy, as being no man at all; and here, let me say, is to be found one of the prolific causes of the general unhappiness of woman in wedded life. Husbands forget three things of vast importance to the happiness of wedlock: that love can only be maintained by tenderness, consideration, and respect; and that he comes too near, who comes to be denied; and that it is not, and never was or will be, true, that a man may do what he likes with his own!
But where unhealth exists from domestic causes, the woman has a sure relief, and it mainly consists in expanding the lungs, bracing and invigorating the nervous system; the means adapted
