She had conceived a
singular jealousy of this daughter who had changed her husband's nature,
and who had supplanted the traditions of the household life; she had
acquired an exaggerated depreciation of those feminine charms which
had never been a factor in her own domestic happiness. She saw in her
husband's desire to mitigate the savage austerities of their habits
only a weak concession to the powers of beauty and adornment--degrading
vanities she had never known in their life-long struggle for frontier
supremacy--that had never brought them victorious out of that struggle.
"Frizzles," "furblows," and "fancy fixin's" had never helped them in
their exodus across the plains; had never taken the place of swift eyes,
quick ears, strong hands, and endurance; had never nursed the sick or
bandaged the wounded. When envy or jealousy invades the female heart
after forty it is apt to bring a bitterness which knows no attenuating
compensation in that coquetry, emulation, passionate appeal, or innocent
tenderness, which makes tolerable the jealous caprices of the younger
woman.
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