jam, and of hams, soaked in creosote, sworn to
have been hanging in the reek of the Yorkshire
chimneys a month longer than was absolutely
necessary. They have done their duty to the
small grocer then, adding a threat to leave him
if he persists in his nefarious practices; also
they have done their duty when they pay his
bill regularly at Christmas, or, it may be, once
a week, deducting their per-centage for ready
cash as their duty to themselves. But I think
there is something more required than even all
this, good and right as it is. So did the Joneses.
When the grocer's miserable little wife fell ill—
" Wife, ma'am!" said Jones's cook, a portly
spinster with an account at the savings-bank;
" I don't call her a wife, ma'am; I call her a
slave!"—and Jones's cook was about right:
well, when she fell ill, it was not quite the
popular notion of a customer's duty to the
tradesman supplying him with short weight, for
Jones to send the poor little wife a bottle of
wine; and for Mrs. Jones to furbish up an
odd frock or two for the children, adding a
tucker or a shoulder-knot for a little bit of
grace thrown in. The duty would have stopped
short at the weekly payments and the careful
remonstrance; it would not have gone
into wine and pleasant fineries; for duty does
not wander abroad, though love and charity
may—at least, not that kind of duty which
people pride themselves on when they feed their
world on cold porridge, and give neither milk
nor butter, neither sugar nor honey, as softener
or sweetener.

A wife does her duty to her husband, and
keeps herself above blame, if she is faithful and
passably domestic. And a husband does his
duty to his wife when he makes her a sufficient
allowance, and lets her be mistress in her own
house, not interposing his masterhood too rudely,
when he cares for her comforts and fit and,
if you will, elegant maintenance. That is his
duty to her; and I am sorry to add a duty which
every husband does not think it binding on him
to perform. But is there nothing more due
from either of them? Is there no generous
forbearance with mutual failings? not in that
aggravating way of, " It is my duty to bear, and
so I bear it; and do pray come and see what a
sweet holy martyr I am, and how beautifully I
am bearing it;" not in a hymn of one's own
composing, sung with crisped lips and averted
eyes, but in the only way worth having, with
the generosity of love, with the forbearing of
true charity and patience. The wives and
husbands living together according to the law of
duty only, and not according to the law of love—
the heart that is moulded only to this form—the
lips that breathe no other prayer—the soul that
knows no other aspiration—the lives established
on this platform and no other—what a cold,
dry, miserable set! They are mere mummies.

I knew a wife of this stamp, and I dare say
many others knew her too. She has done her
duty, certainly, in her chilly life, and done it
very thoroughly, as duty. She has kept her
husband's money carefully, and has spent it
judiciously, always in the most telling manner and
with the best political result: she has laid
herself out with the skill of a general conquering
an unwilling country, cultivating only the richer
part of her acquaintance and those in whose
hands, or by whose connexions, lay the worth of
good fat fees, while systematically closing the
door against those who were only ailing and
affectionate, and not remunerative; and she has
never wanted an excuse for so closing the door,
even against the meekest face! She has
publicly professed just so much more than the
ordinary amount of piety as puts her in accord
with the fanatics, yet keeps her tolerable to the
careless—a nicely calculated amount, doing
her infinite credit to have hit; she has married
some of her daughters to her mind, and is
actively canvassing for the remainder, for which
purpose her house is plentifully supplied with
young men of good expectations, but as
hermetically sealed as was ever Eleusis to the
uninitiated to such as have their fortunes still to
seek; in all which she has done her duty, and
the world has no fault to find. But in the true
interior of that marriage—in the secret sanctuary
of that house—how does she stand? As a
mask, a sham, a simulacrum, hollow from the
inside and the mere effigy of a woman on the
outward, as a dead, dry, make-believe of living
flesh, if true wifehood means anything beyond
judicious housekeeping, if a man's real mate
should be more than his steward, and a mother's
functions go beyond nursery surveillance and
successful match-making.

She has done her duty. So be it.
Rigorously and exactly she has meted out her
measure of allowance, and never once has she let it
flow over into the gracious excess of love, never
once has she flashed out into the generous fire
of sacrifice. Let her reward be the same. For
her duty let her have justice, and strike the
balance for the rest. A miserable balance for a
sin-laden one-sided mortality, that which is made
between duty and justice, with neither love nor
mercy to trim the scales! She has done her
duty, she says again, and why should the world
complain? though to do the world justice it
shows very little inclination to complain: only
the hungry hearts of her household may sometimes
cry out in the pain of loving need, asking
for a home, not only for a lodging value so
much a quarter. But to her all this is mere
wasteful fancy-work, of which neither curtains
nor wedding-cloaks can be made; just so much
loss of time, she says grimly, thinking that
Providence would have done well to have made
of roses aërial potatoes, and of nightingales fit
victims for the spit of value in proportion to
their song. That would have matched her ideas
of duty; at present such excesses go on the
side of love, and love is a waste of power, she
says. Poor thing! how she has missed the
great arc of strength.

Many people do their duty, for which no one
can give thanks beyond the payment stipulated
for from the beginning. A doctor does his duty
when he goes to see his patients daily, leaving