Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners Part 29

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 {211} 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 {212} 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 is 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 {214} 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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. {215}

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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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]

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Cause of Family Troubles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TIRED OF LIFE.]

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 investigation, would have saved the trouble.

4. THE CLIMAX.--It has been said that a man is never utterly ruined until he has married a bad woman. So the climax of woman's miseries and sorrows may be said to come only when she is bound with that bond which should be her chiefest blessing and her highest joy, but which may prove her deepest sorrow and her bitterest curse.

5. THE FOLLY OF FOLLIES.--There are some lessons which people are very slow to learn, and yet which are based upon {218} the simple principles of common-sense. A young lady casts her eye upon a young man. She says, "I mean to have that man." She plies her arts, engages his affections, marries him, and secures for herself a life of sorrow and disappointment, ending perhaps in a broken up home or an early grave. Any prudent, intelligent person of mature age, might have warned or cautioned her; but she sought no advice, and accepted no admonition. A young man may pursue a similar course with equally disastrous results.

6. HAP-HAZARD.--Many marriages are undoubtedly arranged by what may be termed the accident of locality. Persons live near each other, become acquainted, and engage themselves to those whom they never would have selected as their companions in life if they had wider opportunities of acquaintance. Within the borders of their limited circle they make a selection which may be wise or may be unwise. They have no means of judging, they allow no one else to judge for them. The results are sometimes happy and sometimes unhappy in the extreme. It is well to act cautiously in doing what can be done but once. It is not a pleasant experience for a person to find out a mistake when it is too late to rectify it.

7. WE ALL CHANGE.--When two persons of opposite s.e.x are often thrown together they are very naturally attracted to each other, and are liable to imbibe the opinion that they are better fitted for life-long companions.h.i.+p than any other two persons in the world. This may be the case, or it may not be. There are a thousand chances against such a conclusion to one in favor of it. But even if at the present moment these two persons were fitted to be a.s.sociated, no one can tell whether the case will be the same five or ten years hence. Men change; women change; they are not the same they were ten years ago; they are not the same they will be ten years hence.

8. THE SAFE RULE.--Do not be in a hurry; take your time, and consider well before you allow your devotion to rule you. Study first your character, then study the character of her whom you desire to marry. Love works mysteriously, and if it will bear careful and cool investigation, it will no doubt thrive under adversity. When people marry they unite their destinies for the better or the worse. Marriage is a contract for life and will never bear a hasty conclusion. _Never be in a hurry!_

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Jealousy--Its Cause and Cure.

Trifles, light as air Are to the jealous confirmations strong, As proofs of holy writ.--SHAKESPEARE.

Nor Jealousy Was understood, the injur'd lover's h.e.l.l.--MILTON.

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on.--SHAKESPEARE.

1. DEFINITION.--Jealousy is an accidental pa.s.sion, for which the faculty indeed is unborn. In its n.o.bler form and in its n.o.bler motives it arises from love, and in its lower form it arises from the deepest and darkest Pit of Satan.

2. HOW DEVELOPED.--Jealousy arises either from weakness, which from a sense of its own want of lovable qualities is not convinced of being sure of its cause, or from distrust, which thinks the beloved person capable of infidelity. Sometimes all these motives may act together.

3. n.o.bLEST JEALOUSY.--The n.o.blest jealousy, if the term n.o.ble is appropriate, is a sort of ambition or pride of the loving person who feels it is an insult that another one should a.s.sume it as possible to supplant his love, or it is the highest degree of devotion which sees a declaration of its object in the foreign invasion, as it were, of his own altar.

Jealousy is always a sign that a little more wisdom might adorn the individual without harm.

4. THE LOWEST JEALOUSY.--The lowest species of jealousy is a sort of avarice of envy which, without being capable of love, at least wishes to possess the object of its jealousy alone by the one party a.s.suming a sort of property right over the other. This jealousy, which might be called the Satanic, is generally to be found with old withered "husbands," whom the devil has prompted to marry young women and who forthwith dream night and day of cuck-old's horns. These Argus-eyed keepers are no longer capable of any feeling that could be called love, they are rather as a rule heartless house-tyrants, and are in constant dread that some one may admire or appreciate his unfortunate slave.

5. WANT OF LOVE.--The general conclusion will be that jealousy is more the result of wrong conditions which cause uncongenial unions, and which through moral corruption, artificially create distrust, than a necessary accompaniment of love.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEEKING THE LIFE OF A RIVAL.]

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6. RESULT OF POOR OPINION.--Jealousy is a pa.s.sion with which those are most afflicted who are the least worthy of love. An innocent maiden who enters marriage will not dream of getting jealous; but all her innocence cannot secure her against the jealousy of her husband if he has been a libertine.

Those are wont to be the most jealous who have the consciousness that they themselves are most deserving of jealousy. Most men in consequence of their present education and corruption have so poor an opinion not only of the male, but even of the female s.e.x, that they believe every woman at every moment capable of what they themselves have looked for among all and have found among the most unfortunate, the prost.i.tutes. No libertine can believe in the purity of woman; it is contrary to nature. A libertine therefore cannot believe in the loyalty of a faithful wife.