ordinary infantile expression. In proportion as their growth progresses, these unfortunate innocents acquire more and more of the senile expression, and either succumb in their childhood to the diseases for which they are proverbially an easy prey, or they eke out a miserable and puny existence, rarely attaining to adult age.7
Disparity of ages in which the woman is the older is a comparatively rare occurrence. Melancholy instances happen sufficiently often, however, to render it necessary that we should also include these ill-assorted unions in our denunciations. "While they are infinitely preferable, in the moral and physicnl point of view, to the vicious connections of which we have hitherto spoken, they are, nevertheless, to be deprecated as entailing not only positive unhappiness, but grave dangers to health.
In no case should the age of the woman exceed that of her husband, to however slight an extent. The earlier relative period of "old age" will mark this disparity very painfully as time progresses, a disparity which must gradually develop itself in the decade of thirty to forty. So, while the husband appears in the prime of his manhood, "the sere, the yellow leaf" is too obviously stealing over the wife. There is something exceedingly touching in the efforts put forth by these forlorn wives to hide the inexorable ravages of time. But the resources of art, albeit dangerous to health,8 cannot long postpone the evil day when the poor creature, the senior of her husband, finds herself the unmistakable "old woman," no longer personally attractive to her husband, himself, perhaps, in the very pride of manly beauty. It is in precisely these circumstances that so many men seek to justify themselves in the establishment of criminal relations, often introducing their paramours into the very household, under the guise of servants.
