Part 29 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+nes. 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.