How I wish I had been a man." It was certainly a shame.
So it came that, in almost everything she undertook Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown had to act without the least help from her husband.
Every Wednesday, for instance, when the Dante Club met at her house (they selected four lines each week to meditate on, and then discussed them at lunch), Mrs.Rasselyer-Brown had to carry the whole burden of it--her very phrase, "the whole burden"-- alone.

Anyone who has carried four lines of Dante through a Moselle lunch knows what a weight it is.
In all these things her husband was useless, quite useless.

It is not right to be ashamed of one's husband.

And to do her justice, Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown always explained to her three hundred intimates that she was _not_ ashamed of him; in fact, that she _refused_ to be.

But it was hard to see him brought into comparison at their own table with superior men.