Every sensible girl married to a poor man comprehends, as one trait of wifely duty, that she must make her trousseau last and look well as long as she can.

In the honorable dread of suggesting to him whose fortune she has elected to share, that when her handsome gowns are no longer wearable she must replace lace with cotton lawns, and silk with all-wool merino or serge, she devises excuses for sparing the costly fabrics--pretexts which, to his shame it is said, he is prone to misunderstand.

If men such as he could guess at the repressed longings for the brave array of other times that assail the wearers of well-saved--therefore _passee_--finery, at sight of other women less conscientious, or with richer husbands than themselves, reveling in the latest and most enticing modes--if eyes scornful of plain attire could penetrate to the jealously locked closet where feminine vanity and native extravagance are kept under watch and ward by the love the critic is ready to doubt,--print, gingham and stuff gowns would be fairer than ermine and velvet in John's esteem..