From the Introduction: In a certain sense all wives are "Their Husbands' Wives", but in naming their little collection of tales, of varied interest but of single purport, the editors have had peculiarly in mind those wives who perpetuate in the latest woman the ideal of the earliest. It is an ideal which shines alike through the tender humor of Mr. Clemens's charming fantasy of the primal world, Mrs. Stuart Phelps's romance of our great, everyday, latter-day life, Mrs. Roach's interesting study of the truest and most modern of types, Mr. Pottle's rather grimly faithful portrayal of a situation for more frequent in marriage than has been owned, Mr. Hibbard's delicate divination of the secret of a woman's soul, and Mrs. Ellery Channing's hopeful and delightful hypothesis in a region of the heart perhaps too little explored by practical science.