For soldiers, I find the generals commonly in their hortatives, put men in mind of their
wives and children; and I think the despising of marriage amongst the Turks, maketh the vulgar soldier more base.
He discovered his two married brethren in their corner, unaccompanied by their
wives; and he delivered his apology for his wife with the air of a man who felt unaffectedly ashamed of it:
I have a wife for you--nay, two
wives, for your days are short and I shall surely live to see you hang with my fathers from the canoe-house ridgepole."
The men replied audaciously, they should be starved if they stayed here, for they could not work, and would not work, and they could but be starved abroad; and if they were murdered, there was an end of them; they had no
wives or children to cry after them; and, in short, insisted importunately upon their demand, declaring they would go, whether they gave them any arms or not.
Our gloves are glued with the frozen blood, Our eyes with the drifting snow; But we come back to our
wives again, Back from the edge of the floe!
"Ay, Mopo; but first you must get new
wives, for yours are dead also, all five of them."
And now the Trojans would have been routed and driven back into Ilius, had not Priam's son Helenus, wisest of augurs, said to Hector and Aeneas, "Hector and Aeneas, you two are the mainstays of the Trojans and Lycians, for you are foremost at all times, alike in fight and counsel; hold your ground here, and go about among the host to rally them in front of the gates, or they will fling themselves into the arms of their
wives, to the great joy of our foes.
Perhaps they were afraid that their
wives had come from Home unbeknownst.
Muhammadans here who can afford it keep a good many
wives on hand.
Since then every family is part of a city, and each of those individuals is part of a family, and the virtue of the parts ought to correspond to the virtue of the whole; it is necessary, that both the
wives and children of the community should be instructed correspondent to the nature thereof, if it is of consequence to the virtue of the state, that the
wives and children therein should be virtuous, and of consequence it certainly is, for the
wives are one half of the free persons; and of the children the succeeding citizens are to be formed.
And if, I said, the male and female sex appear to differ in their fitness for any art or pursuit, we should say that such pursuit or art ought to be assigned to one or the other of them; but if the difference consists only in women bearing and men begetting children, this does not amount to a proof that a woman differs from a man in respect of the sort of education she should receive; and we shall therefore continue to maintain that our guardians and their
wives ought to have the same pursuits.
"My
wives and children," he replied, "are well and happy."