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Updated: June 14, 2025
"My dear," said I, "you are driving me upon delicate ground. Would you have your husband appear in public with that most opprobrious badge of the domestic furies, a dishcloth, pinned to his coat-tail? It is coming to exactly the point I have always predicted, Mrs. Crowfield: you must write yourself. I always told you that you could write far better than I, if you would only try.
Crowfield, "I am grieved at the opprobrium which falls on the race of boys. Why should the most critical era in the life of those who are to be men, and to govern society, be passed in a sort of outlawry, a rude warfare with all existing institutions? The years between ten and twenty are full of the nervous excitability which marks the growth and maturing of the manly nature.
"Let me see, how many are now down on your list to be looked about for, Mrs. Crowfield? some twelve or thirteen, are there not? You've got Tom's sister disposed of finally, I hope, that's a comfort!" "Well, I'm sorry to say she came back on my hands yesterday," said my wife patiently. "She is a foolish young thing, and said she didn't like living out in the country.
Crowfield," said the Dove, "since you speak us so fair, and expect so much of us, we must of course try not to fall below your compliments; but, after all, tell us what is the right standard about dress. Now we have daily lectures about this at home.
"You see, we girls think everything of you; and now we don't like it that you don't like our fashions." "Why, my little princess, so long as I like you better than your fashions, and merely think they are not worthy of you, what's the harm?" "Oh yes, to be sure. You sweeten the dose to us babies with that sugarplum. But really, Mr. Crowfield, why don't you like the fashions?"
"It will last her all her life," she said, "and always be such a pleasure to look at; and a pretty tea-table is such a pretty sight!" So spoke Mrs. Crowfield, "unweaned from china by a thousand falls." She spoke even with tears in her eyes. Verily these women are harps of a thousand strings! But to return to my subject.
The conversation on dress which I had held with Jenny and her little covey of Birds of Paradise appeared to have worked in the minds of the fair council, for it was not long before they invaded my study again in a body. They were going out to a party, but called for Jenny, and of course gave me and Mrs. Crowfield the privilege of seeing them equipped for conquest.
"'I see her health wearing away under these trials, her life made a burden; I feel no power to help her; and I ask you, Mr. Crowfield, What are we to do? What is to become of family life in this country? "'Yours truly, "My friend's letter," said I, "touches upon the very hinge of the difficulty of domestic life with the present generation.
Crowfield, that remark is as good as if I had made it myself," said I. "It is true that I have been all my life a speculator and observer in all domestic matters, having them so confidentially under my eye in our own household; and so, if I write on a pure woman's matter, it must be understood that I am only your pen and mouthpiece, only giving tangible form to wisdom which I have derived from you."
Crowfield, you are allowing us all a very generous margin," said Humming-Bird. "But now," said I, "I am coming to the restrictions. When is love of dress excessive and wrong? To this I answer by stating my faith in one of old Plato's ideas, in which he speaks of beauty and its uses.
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