Searchlights on Health-The Science of Eugenics Part 25

18. An industrious, thrifty, hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives to delve alone is uphill work.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIRESIDE FANCIES.]

MARRIAGE SECURITIES.

1. SEEK EACH OTHER'S HAPPINESS.--A selfish marriage that seeks only its own happiness defeats itself. Happiness is a fire that will not burn long on one stick.

2. DO NOT MARRY SUDDENLY.--It can always be done till it is done, if it is a proper thing to do.

3. MARRY IN YOUR OWN GRADE IN SOCIETY.--It is painful to be always apologizing for any one. It is more painful to be apologized for.

4. DO NOT MARRY DOWNWARD.--It is hard enough to advance in the quality of life without being loaded with clay heavier than your own. It will be sufficiently difficult to keep your children up to your best level without having to correct a bias in their blood.

5. DO NOT SELL YOURSELF.--It matters not whether the price be money or position.

6. DO NOT THROW YOURSELF AWAY.--You will not receive too much, even if you are paid full price.

7. SEEK THE ADVICE OF YOUR PARENTS.--Your parents are your best friends. They will make more sacrifice for you than any other mortals.

They are elevated above selfishness concerning you. If they differ from you concerning your choice, it is because they must.

8. DO NOT MARRY TO PLEASE ANY THIRD PARTY.--You must do the living and enduring.

9. DO NOT MARRY TO SPITE ANYBODY.--It would add wretchedness to folly.

10. DO NOT MARRY BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE MAY SEEK THE SAME HAND.--One glove may not fit all hands equally well.

11. DO NOT MARRY TO GET RID OF ANYBODY.--The coward who shot himself to escape from being drafted was insane.

12. DO NOT MARRY MERELY FOR THE IMPULSE OF LOVE.--Love is a principle as well as an emotion. So far as it is a sentiment it is a blind guide. It does not wait to test the presence of exalted character in its object before breaking out into a flame. Shavings make a hot fire, but hard coal is better for the Winter.

13. DO NOT MARRY WITHOUT LOVE.--A body without a soul soon becomes offensive.

14. TEST CAREFULLY THE EFFECT OF PROTRACTED a.s.sOCIATION.--If familiarity breeds contempt before marriage it will afterward.

15. TEST CAREFULLY THE EFFECT OF PROTRACTED SEPARATION.--True love will defy both time and s.p.a.ce.

16. CONSIDER CAREFULLY the right of your children under the laws of heredity. It is doubtful whether you have a right to increase the number of invalids and cripples.

17. DO NOT MARRY SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU HAVE PROMISED TO DO SO.--If a seam opens between you now it will widen into a gulf. It is less offensive to retract a mistaken promise than to perjure your soul before the altar. Your intended spouse has a right to absolute integrity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOING TO BE MARRIED.]

18. MARRY CHARACTER.--It is not so much what one has as what one is.

19. DO NOT MARRY THE WRONG OBJECT.--Themistocles said he would rather marry his daughter to a man without money than to money with a man. It is well to have both. It is fatal to have neither.

20. DEMAND A JUST RETURN.--You give virtue and purity, and gentleness and integrity. You have a right to demand the same in return. Duty requires it.

21. REQUIRE BRAINS.--Culture is good, but will not be transmitted.

Brain power may be.

22. STUDY PAST RELATIONs.h.i.+P.--The good daughter and sister makes a good wife. The good son and brother makes a good husband.

23. NEVER MARRY AS A MISSIONARY DEED.--If one needs saving from bad habits he is not suitable for you.

24. MARRIAGE IS A SURE AND SPECIFIC REMEDY for all the ills known as seminal losses. As right eating cures a sick stomach and right breathing diseased lungs, so the right use of the s.e.xual organs will bring relief and restoration. Many men who have been sufferers from indiscretions of youth, have married, and were soon cured of spermatorrhoea and other complications which accompanied it.

25. A GOOD, LONG COURTs.h.i.+P will often cure many difficulties or ills of the s.e.xual organs. O.S. Fowler says: "See each other often spend many pleasant hours together," have many walks and talks, think of each other while absent, write many love letters, be inspired to many love feelings and acts towards each other, and exercise your s.e.xuality in a thousand forms ten thousand times, every one of which tones up and thereby recuperates this very element now dilapidated. When you have courted long enough to marry, you will be sufficiently restored to be reimproved by it.

UP AND AT IT.--Dress up, spruce up, and be on the alert. Don't wait too long to get one much more perfect than you are; but settle on some one soon. Remember that your uns.e.xed state renders you over-dainty, and easily disgusted. So contemplate only their lovable qualities.

26. PURITY OF PURPOSE.--Court with a pure and loyal purpose, and when thoroughly convinced that the disposition of other difficulties are in the way of a happy marriage life, then _honorably_ discuss it and honorably treat each other in the settlement.

27. DO NOT TRIFLE with the feelings or affections of each other. It is a sin that will curse you all the days of your life.

WOMEN WHO MAKE THE BEST WIVES.

1. CONSCIOUS OF THE DUTIES OF HER s.e.x.--A woman conscious of the duties of her s.e.x, one who unflinchingly discharges the duties allotted to her by nature, would no doubt make a good wife.

2. GOOD WIVES AND MOTHERS.--The good wives and mothers are the women who believe in the sisterhood of women as well as in the brotherhood of men. The highest exponent of this type seeks to make her home something more than an abode where children are fed, clothed and taught the catechism. The State has taken her children into politics by making their education a function of politicians. The good wife and homemaker says to her children, "Where thou goest, I will go." She puts off her own inclinations to ease and selfishness. She studies the men who propose to educate her children; she exhorts mothers to sit beside fathers on the school-board; she will even herself accept such thankless office in the interests of the helpless youth of the schools who need a mother's as well as a father's and a teacher's care in this field of politics.

3. A BUSY WOMAN.--As to whether a busy woman, that is, a woman who labors for mankind in the world outside her home,--whether such an one can also be a good housekeeper, and care for her children, and make a real "Home, Sweet Home!" with all the comforts by way of variation, why! I am ready, as the result of years practical experience as a busy woman, to a.s.sert that women of affairs can also be women of true domestic tastes and habits.

4. BRAINY ENOUGH.--What kind of women make the best wives? The woman who is brainy enough to be a companion, wise enough to be a counsellor, skilled enough in the domestic virtues to be a good housekeeper, and loving enough to guide in true paths the children with whom the home may be blessed.

5. FOUND THE RIGHT HUSBAND.--The best wife is the woman who has found the right husband, a husband who understands her. A man will have the best wife when he rates that wife as queen among women. Of all women she should always be to him the dearest. This sort of man will not only praise the dishes made by his wife, but will actually eat them.

6. BANK ACCOUNT.--He will allow his life-companion a bank account, and will exact no itemized bill at the end of the month. Above all, he will pay the Easter bonnet bill without a word, never bring a friend to dinner without first telephoning home,--short, he will comprehend that the woman who makes the best wife is the woman whom, by his indulgence of her ways and whims, he makes the best wife. So after all, good husbands have the most to do with making good wives.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PUNISHMENT OF WIFE BEATERS IN NEW ENGLAND IN THE EARLY DAYS.]

7. BEST HOME MAKER.--A woman to be the best home maker needs to be devoid of intensive "nerves." She must be neat and systematic, but not too neat, lest she destroy the comfort she endeavors to create. She must be distinctly amiable, while firm. She should have no "career,"

or desire for a career, if she would fill to perfection the home sphere. She must be affectionate, sympathetic and patient, and fully appreciative of the worth and dignity of her sphere.

8. KNOW NOTHING WHATSOEVER ABOUT COOKING OR SEWING OR HOUSEKEEPING.--I am inclined to make my answer to this question somewhat concise, after the manner of a text without the sermon. Like this: To be the "best wife" depends upon three things: first, an abiding faith with G.o.d; second, duty lovingly discharged as daughter, wife and mother; third, self-improvement, mentally, physically, spiritually. With this as a text and as a glittering generality, let me touch upon one or two practical essentials. In the course of every week it is my privilege to meet hundreds of young women,--prospective wives. I am astonished to find that many of these know nothing whatsoever about cooking or sewing or housekeeping. Now, if a woman cannot broil a beefsteak, nor boil the coffee when it is necessary, if she cannot mend the linen, nor patch a coat, if she cannot make a bed, order the dinner, create a lamp-shade, ventilate the house, nor do anything practical in the way of making home actually a home, how can she expect to make even a good wife, not to speak of a better or best wife? I need not continue this sermon. Wise girls will understand.

9. THE BEST KEEPER OF HOME.--As to who is the best keeper of this transition home, memory pictures to me a woman grown white under the old slavery, still bound by it, in that little-out-of-the-way Kansas town, but never so bound that she could not put aside household tasks, at any time, for social intercourse, for religious conversation, for correspondence, for reading, and, above all, for making everyone who came near her feel that her home was the expression of herself, a place for rest, study, and the cultivation of affection. She did not exist for her walls, her carpets, her furniture; they existed for her and all who came to her She considered herself the equal of all; and everyone else thought her the superior of all.