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Worldly Ways and Byways by Eliot Gregory
page 33 of 229 (14%)
if these were suppressed), must have an entirely different point of
view from her own on all the vital issues of life.

Foreigners undoubtedly make excellent husbands for their own women.
But they are, except in rare cases, unsatisfactory helpmeets for
American girls. It is impossible to touch on more than a side or
two of this subject. But as an illustration the following
contrasted stories may be cited:

Two sisters of an aristocratic American family, each with an income
of over forty thousand dollars a year, recently married French
noblemen. They naturally expected to continue abroad the life they
had led at home, in which opera boxes, saddle horses, and constant
entertaining were matters of course. In both cases, our
compatriots discovered that their husbands (neither of them
penniless) had entirely different views. In the first place, they
were told that it was considered "bad form" in France for young
married women to entertain; besides, the money was needed for
improvements, and in many other ways, and as every well-to-do
French family puts aside at least a third of its income as DOTS for
the children (boys as well as girls), these brides found themselves
cramped for money for the first time in their lives, and obliged,
during their one month a year in Paris, to put up with hired traps,
and depend on their friends for evenings at the opera.

This story is a telling set-off to the case of an American wife,
who one day received a windfall in the form of a check for a tidy
amount. She immediately proposed a trip abroad to her husband, but
found that he preferred to remain at home in the society of his
horses and dogs. So our fair compatriot starts off (with his full
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