indifferent to what occupies so much of other women's thoughts, if she
do not always appear in her lover's presence neatly and--to the best of
her ability--becomingly attired. She quickly acquaints herself with his
taste in the matter of women's costumes, and adapts hers to it, wearing
his favorite colors, giving preference to the gowns he has praised, and
arranging her hair in the fashion he has chanced to admire in her
hearing.

In the work-a-day world of matrimonial life, much of all this
undergoes a change. Washington Irving lived and died a fastidious,
unpractical bachelor, or he might have modified the sketch of "The
Wife," the Mary who, after unpacking trunks, washing china, pots and
kettles, putting closets to rights, laying carpets, hanging pictures,
clearing away straw, sawdust, and what in that day corresponded with
jute--dusting and shelving books--and performing the hundred other
duties contingent upon sitting down in the modest cottage hired by her
bankrupt husband,--got tea ready (presumably preparing potatoes for
the same) picked a big mess of strawberries from a bed opportunely
discovered in the garden, donned a white muslin robe and sat down to
the piano to while away a lagging hour while awaiting her Leslie's
return.

The John of our common-sensible age knows in his sober mind that his
bride, in the effort to accomplish one-fourth as much, would equip
herself in a brown gingham, tie a big apron before her, draw a pair of
his discarded gloves with truncated fingers upon her hands, and be too
tired at night to do more than boil the kettle for the cup of tea which
he is more than likely to drink at the kitchen table, spread with a
newspaper--the linen not having been yet dug out of the case in which
"mother and the girls" packed it.