But even as a farce, it seems to be a failure. It is not even funny. The woman without senti- ment and romance in her nature is as unnatural as a juiceless orange. She is a picture without per- spective, or lights and shadows. She is a book without plot, motive, or style.
Sentiment is to woman what perfume is to the flower.
Instead of educating sentiment and romance out, we should educate it into people. The best wife, mother, daughter, and sister is always a woman of sentiment. It is only when the thorny briars of duty are made to blossom with the flowers of sentiment, that life's hard tasks become endurable. The best wife is the woman who idealizes her hus- band, who surrounds him with a halo of romance and sentiment, which in nineteen cases out of twenty causes him to become the very being she imagines him. They forget that it is rude to stare.