BRING not a wife to your home too soon or too late. Wait till you're thirty, but don't thereafter wait; thirty's the age. And give her, as rightly you should, four ripening years, her first of womanhood. Choose out a virgin, and then you will be obeyed, teaching her thrift. Make sure with a neighbouring maid, but watch if people grin when you name her for wife. She's best of all prizes, or worst of all horrors in life -- a sly greedy-guts, a woman who'll drag you down and need no fire at all to be roasting you brown; strong you may be, but unripe you'll shrivel away. |