2. NEGLECT OF YOUR COMPANION.--Do not a.s.sume a right to neglect your companion more after marriage than you did before.
3. SECRETS.--Have no secrets that you keep from your companion. A third party is always disturbing.
4. AVOID THE APPEARANCE OF EVIL.--In matrimonial matters it is often that the mere appearance contains all the evil. Love, as soon as it rises above calculation and becomes love, is exacting. It gives all, and demands all.
5. ONCE MARRIED, NEVER OPEN YOUR MIND TO ANY CHANGE. If you keep the door of your purpose closed, evil or even desirable changes cannot make headway without help.
6. KEEP STEP IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT.--A tree that grows for forty years may take all the sunlight from a tree that stops growing at twenty.
7. KEEP A LIVELY INTEREST IN THE BUSINESS OF THE HOME.--Two that do not pull together are weaker than either alone.
8. GAUGE YOUR EXPENSES BY YOUR REVENUES.--Love must eat. The sheriff often levies on Cupid long before he takes away the old furniture.
9. START FROM WHERE YOUR PARENTS STARTED RATHER THAN FROM WHERE THEY NOW ARE.--Hollow and showy boarding often furnishes the too strong temptation, while the quietness of a humble home would cement the hearts beyond risk.
10. AVOID DEBT.--Spend your own money, but earn it first, then it will not be necessary to blame any one for spending other people"s.
11. DO NOT BOTH GET ANGRY AT THE SAME TIME.--Remember, it takes two to quarrel.
12. DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF EVER TO COME TO AN OPEN RUPTURE.--Things unsaid need less repentance.
13. STUDY TO CONFORM YOUR TASTES AND HABITS TO THE TASTES AND HABITS OF YOUR COMPANION.--If two walk together, they must agree.
HOW TO BE A GOOD WIFE.
1. REVERENCE YOUR HUSBAND.--He sustains by G.o.d"s order a position of dignity as head of a family, head of the woman. Any breaking down of this order indicates a mistake in the union, or a digression from duty.
2. LOVE HIM.--A wife loves as naturally as the sun shines. Love is your best weapon. You conquered him with that in the first place. You can reconquer by the same means.
3. DO NOT CONCEAL YOUR LOVE FROM HIM.--If he is crowded with care, and too busy to seem to heed your love, you need to give all the greater attention to securing his knowledge of your love. If you intermit he will settle down into a hard, cold life with increased rapidity. Your example will keep the light on his conviction. The more he neglects the fire on the hearth, the more carefully must you feed and guard it. It must not be allowed to go out. Once out you must sit ever in darkness and in the cold.
4. CULTIVATE THE MODESTY AND DELICACY OF YOUR YOUTH.--The relations and familiarity of wedded life may seem to tone down the sensitive and retiring instincts of girlhood, but nothing can compensate for the loss of these. However, much men may admire the public performance of gifted women, they do not desire that boldness and dash in a wife.
The holy blush of a maiden"s modesty is more powerful in hallowing and governing a home than the heaviest armament that ever a warrior bore.
5. CULTIVATE PERSONAL ATTRACTIVENESS.--This means the storing of your mind with a knowledge of pa.s.sing events, and with a good idea of the world"s general advance. If you read nothing, and make no effort to make yourself attractive, you will soon sink down into a dull hack of stupidity. If your husband never hears from you any words of wisdom, or of common information, he will soon hear nothing from you. Dress and gossips soon wear out. If your memory is weak, so that it hardly seems worth while to read, that is additional reason for reading.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TALKING BEFORE MARRIAGE.]
6. CULTIVATE PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS.--When you were encouraging the attentions of him whom you now call husband, you did not neglect any item of dress or appearance that could help you. Your hair was always in perfect training. You never greeted him with a ragged or untidy dress or soiled hands. It is true that your "market is made," but you cannot afford to have it "broken." Cleanliness and good taste will attract now as they did formerly. Keep yourself at your best. Make the most of physical endowments. Neatness and order break the power of poverty.
7. STUDY YOUR HUSBAND"S CHARACTER.--He has his peculiarities. He has no right to many of them, and you need to know them; thus you can avoid many hours of friction. The good pilot steers around the sunken rocks that lie in the channel. The engineer may remove them, not the pilot. You are more pilot than engineer. Consult his tastes. It is more important to your home, that you should please him than anybody else.
8. PRACTICE ECONOMY.--Many families are cast out of peace into grumbling and discord by being compelled to fight against poverty.
When there are no great distresses to be endured or accounted for, complaint and fault-finding are not so often evoked. Keep your husband free from the annoyance of disappointed creditors, and he will be more apt to keep free from annoying you. To toil hard for bread, to fight the wolf from the door, to resist impatient creditors, to struggle against complaining pride at home, is too much to ask of one man. A crust that is your own is a feast, while a feast that is purloined from unwilling creditors if a famine.
HOW TO BE A GOOD HUSBAND.
1. SHOW YOUR LOVE.--All life manifests itself. As certainly as a live tree will put forth leaves in the spring, so certainly will a living love show itself. Many a n.o.ble man toils early and late to earn bread and position for his wife. He hesitates at no weariness for her sake.
He justly thinks that such industry and providence give a better expression of his love than he could by caressing her and letting the grocery bills go unpaid. He fills the cellar and pantry. He drives and pushes his business. He never dreams that he is actually starving his wife to death. He may soon have a woman left to superintend his home, but his wife is dying. She must be kept alive by the same process that called her into being. Recall and repeat the little attentions and delicate compliments that once made you so agreeable, and that fanned her love into a consuming flame. It is not beneath the dignity of the skillful physician to study all the little symptoms, and order all the little round of attentions that check the waste of strength and brace the staggering const.i.tution. It is good work for a husband to cherish his wife.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TALKING AFTER MARRIAGE.]
2. CONSULT WITH YOUR WIFE.--She is apt to be as right as you are, and frequently able to add much to your stock of wisdom. In any event she appreciates your attentions.
3. STUDY TO KEEP HER YOUNG.--It can be done. It is not work, but worry, that wears. Keep a brave, true heart between her and all harm.
4. HELP TO BEAR HER BURDENS.--Bear one another"s burdens, and so fulfill the law of love. Love seeks opportunities to do for the loved object. She has the constant care of your children. She is ordained by the Lord to stand guard over them. Not a disease can appear in the community without her taking the alarm. Not a disease can come over the threshold without her instantly springing into the mortal combat.
If there is a deficiency anywhere it comes out of her pleasure. Her burdens are everywhere. Look for them, that you may lighten them.
5. MAKE YOURSELF HELPFUL BY THOUGHTFULNESS.--Remember to bring into the house your best smile and sunshine. It is good for you, and it cheers up the home. There is hardly a nook in the house that has not been carefully hunted through to drive out everything that might annoy you. The dinner which suits, or ought to suit you, has not come on the table of itself. It represents much thoughtfulness and work. You can do no more manly thing than find some way of expressing, in word or look, your appreciation of it.
6. EXPRESS YOUR WILL, NOT BY COMMANDS, BUT BY SUGGESTIONS.--It is G.o.d"s order that you should be the head of the family. You are clothed with authority. But this does not authorize you to be stern and harsh, as an officer in the army. Your authority is the dignity of love.
When it is not clothed in love it ceases to have the substance of authority. A simple suggestion that may embody a wish, an opinion or an argument, becomes one who reigns over such a kingdom as yours.
7. SEEK TO REFINE YOUR NATURE.--It is no slander to say that many men have wives much more refined than themselves. This is natural in the inequalities of life. Other qualities may compensate for any defect here. But you need have no defect in refinement. Preserve the gentleness and refinement of your wife as a rich legacy for your children, and in so doing you will lift yourself to higher levels.
8. BE A GENTLEMAN AS WELL AS A HUSBAND.--The signs and bronze and callouses of toil are no indications that you are not a gentleman.
The soul of gentlemanliness is a kindly feeling toward others, that prompts one to secure their comfort. That is why the thoughtful peasant lover is always so gentlemanly, and in his love much above himself.
9. STAY AT HOME.--Habitual absence during the evenings is sure to bring sorrow. If your duty or business calls you you have the promise that you will be kept in all your ways. But if you go out to mingle with other society, and leave your wife at home alone, or with the children and servants, know that there is no good in store for you.
She has claims upon you that you can not afford to allow to go to protest. Reverse the case. You sit down alone after having waited all day for your wife"s return, and think of her as reveling in gay society, and see if you can keep out all the doubts as to what takes her away. If your home is not as attractive as you want it, you are a princ.i.p.al partner. Set yourself about the work of making it attractive.
10. TAKE YOUR WIFE WITH YOU INTO SOCIETY.--Seclusion begets morbidness. She needs some of the life that comes from contact with society. She must see how other people appear and act. It often requires an exertion for her to go out of her home, but it is good for her and for you. She will bring back more sunshine. It is wise to rest sometimes. When the Arab stops for his dinner he unpacks his camel.
Treat your wife with as much consideration.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration: TIRED OF LIFE.]
CAUSE OF FAMILY TROUBLES.
1. MUCH BETTER TO BE ALONE.--He who made man said it is not good for him to be alone; but it is much better to be alone, than it is to be in some kinds of company. Many couples who felt unhappy when they were apart, have been utterly miserable when together; and scores who have been ready to go through fire and water to get married, have been willing to run the risk of fire and brimstone to get divorced. It is by no means certain that because persons are wretched before marriage they will be happy after it. The wretchedness of many homes, and the prevalence of immorality and divorce is a sad commentary on the evils which result from unwise marriages.
2. UNAVOIDABLE EVILS.--There are plenty of unavoidable evils in this world, and it is mournful to think of the mult.i.tudes who are preparing themselves for needless disappointments, and who yet have no fear, and are unwilling to be instructed, cautioned or warned. To them the experience of mature life is of little account compared with the wisdom of ardent and enthusiastic youth.
3. MATRIMONIAL INFELICITY.--One great cause of matrimonial infelicity is the hasty marriages of persons who have no adequate knowledge of each other"s characters. Two strangers become acquainted, and are attracted to each other, and without taking half the trouble to investigate or inquire that a prudent man would take before buying a saddle horse, they are married. In a few weeks or months it is perhaps found that one of the parties was married already, or possibly that the man is drunken or vicious, or the woman anything but what she should be. Then begins the bitter part of the experience: shame, disgrace, scandal, separation, sin and divorce, all come as the natural results of a rash and foolish marriage. A little time spent in honest, candid, and careful preliminary inquiry and investigations would have saved the trouble.