Yet even in our best regulated and most approximately Circular families I cannot say that the ideal of family life is so high as with you in Spaceland. There is peace, in so far as the absence of slaughter may be called by that name, but there is necessarily little harmony of tastes or pursuits; and the cautious wisdom of the Circles has ensured safety at the cost of domestic comfort. In every Circular or Polygonal household it has been a habit from time immemorial⁠—and now has become a kind of instinct among the women of our higher classes⁠—that the mothers and daughters should constantly keep their eyes and mouths towards their husband and his male friends; and for a lady in a family of distinction to turn her back upon her husband would be regarded as a kind of portent, involving loss of status . But, as I shall soon show, this custom, though it has the advantage of safety, is not without its disadvantages.

In the house of the working man or respectable tradesman⁠—where the wife is allowed to turn her back upon her husband, while pursuing her household avocations⁠—there are at least intervals of quiet, when the wife is neither seen nor heard, except for the humming sound of the continuous peace-cry; but in the homes of the upper classes there is too often no peace. There the voluble mouth and bright penetrating eye are ever directed towards the master of the household; and light itself is not more persistent than the stream of feminine discourse. The tact and skill which suffice to avert a woman’s sting are unequal to the task of stopping a woman’s mouth; and as the wife has absolutely nothing to say, and absolutely no constraint of wit, sense, or conscience to prevent her from saying it, not a few cynics have been found to aver that they prefer the danger of the death-dealing but inaudible sting to the safe sonorousness of a woman’s other end.