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Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 1855-1919

"A Woman of the World Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters"

_ I do not suppose your husband will seek the
companionship of gamblers or depraved souls during your absence. Men as
seemingly high and strong as he have fallen so low, but I do not believe
he will. Yet, so long as we know such conditions exist, and so long as
men as a class take the liberties they do when left to find distraction
and entertainment, it seems to me little less than criminal when a young
wife like yourself deliberately leaves her home and husband for the sake
of any possible attainment.
You have no right to marry a man and then to make his happiness and his
comfort secondary to your ambitions.
If he had neglected you, if he failed to support you, if he was not
loyal to you, it would be different.
But you say he is "the best of men," and that you never have regretted
marrying him.
Then let me beg of you to stand by him, as a wife should, and to make
what progress in your music you can at home, and wait until your husband
can accompany you before you go abroad to study.
The highway of divorce is crowded with the student wives who have been
"abroad to study," leaving their husbands at home to earn the money.


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