In The Domestic Relations.
Stop short of thinking that marriage and settlement in life can acquit you of the tenderness and reverence due your parents, even if they are well-to-do. It is a moral obligation which, contracted at your birth, should cease not even with their death, but live on and on, an evergreen of the memory, an amaranth of the heart.
Stop before reserving for the bosom of your own family the fits of ill-temper that you would be ashamed of if public. This is putting your own household on a level with a private bear-garden, whose limited spectators cannot be over-grateful for the privilege accorded.
Stop short of supposing that your wife is anything less than an equal partner in the hymeneal firm. Even if she came to you penniless, the idea that she is thenceforth indebted to you for home, position or freedom from care, is a barbarism fortunately obsolete in this country.
Stop, likewise, short of the imported notion, also obsolete, that she belongs to you other than by the free heart-gift that inspired her marriage vows, or that she is in any sense your property. The cherishing of such a sentiment is degrading alike to husband and wife.
Stop before denying to your wife the right to have little secrets of her own, if you claim the same privilege for yourself. A loving and trusted wife will have no important secrets apart from her husband.
Stop short of altogether distrusting her in money matters. Even if she have but little common sense in such things, her wifehood is a responsibility for which you are responsible, and which cannot be wholly nullified without humiliating her.
Stop short of denying her the possession of some pocket-money of her own, if but very little. “During my married life,” said a prominent lecturer on woman’s rights, “I never had a cent of pocket-money that I was not forced to steal from my husband.” And this statement will evoke more reflection than censure in the thoughtful mind.
Stop before grumblingly supplying the household demands. This practice of growling over a domestic expenditure, which is but a tithe of what your next “good time with the boys” will cost you, is more prevalent than sensible.
Stop before placing any one over your wife’s head in her own house. Be it mother-in-law, sister-in-law, or any one else, the course is alike risky and unwise.
Stop before cultivating a dislike or niggardliness for your wife’s passion for dress, if it is accompanied by a refined taste and an earnest desire to be within what you can afford. Fine feathers may not always make fine birds, but a naturally attractive woman is undeniably more lovable and attractive when tastefully attired than otherwise.
Stop long before relinquishing, after marriage, the delicate little attentions and sacrifices that were so acceptable during your courtship. A lover-husband will make a sweetheart-wife, and for such the honey-moon need have no wane.
Stop, however, dead short of uxoriousness to a degree that shall excite a smile or comment. The former is apt to be exasperating, and the latter of a nature the reverse of soothing to your amour propre.
Stop before developing a womanish desire to interfere with domestic arrangements outside of your province. In other words, never be what your wife might call a “cock-biddy,” and your cook “an intermiddling mon.”
Stop before developing a fault-finding disposition with the cooking or other accommodations, or first be sure that you are not more responsible for the faults than your wife.
Stop short of concealing the fact from your wife, if she is falling unconsciously into slovenly and unkempt personal habits when only in your presence. Let her but comprehend that this is a wifely neglect that has driven many a husband into neater but unscrupulous feminine society, and speedy amendment must follow.
Stop before holding your wife accountable for every little smile or frankness accorded to her antenuptial admirers. ’Tis the watched fire that languishes; and, should she meditate treason, she would not hint it by so much as a rush-light.
Stop before letting her know it, if you find out that your marriage has been a mistake. Doubtless this will make itself felt, despite your utmost precautions, and her sufferings in making the sad discovery will then challenge your compunction, your pity and your redoubled devotion, if you are a true man.
Stop before laughing at piety in your wife, even if an infidel yourself. “Wise men like to have pious wives,” says Emerson, “and it is well for all concerned that it should be so.”
Stop before betraying your weaknesses to your children. Even a hypocritical assumption of a morality that you do not always practice is preferable to self-exposure in this regard.
Stop before correcting them in the presence of outsiders. The self-respect of a little child, once wounded to the quick, is long in healing; and some consideration is due, moreover, to the outsiders.
Stop before punishing a child when influenced by anger. The punishment then ceases to be corrective, and is only resentful; whereas the helplessness of the child should of itself evoke but magnanimity.
Stop, when thus impelled by anger, and reflect if you would as readily seek to gratify it, were no such disparity existent—that is, where the child as big and powerful as yourself.
Stop before threatening a chastisement that you don’t intend to inflict. Or, if you must persist in this course, don’t ascribe the continued disobedience, which is its inevitable outgrowth, to anything but your own weakness.
Stop short of deception or untruth in your dealings with your children, if you would impress them with the opposite sentiments.
Stop, in this regard, and reflect that, if the childish mind is wax to early impressions, it is of a kind that hardens with the imprint, and that from the hardening process spring the imitation and the emulation, which must gradually corrupt or ennoble, as the case may be.
Stop before assuming a bullying tone or attitude toward your family or your domestics. Vaporings of this description are always in wretched taste, and a home-circle that must needs be terrorized is little to be envied.
Stop before living beyond, or even quite up to your means, and be not ambitious to make an outside show at the expense of internal comfort.
Stop short of lessening the significance of old-time festivities, such as Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, New Year’s and birth-day observances, simply because you have yourself outgrown their zest.
Stop before repressing any innocent propensity to gush on the part of your wife or children. It is a chill home-fountain that will not occasionally overflow.
Stop, if possible, before ever disturbing your family peace with even so much as an unkind or hasty word. The pretty lines,
“We have greeting words for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest,
But oft for Our Own the bitter tone.
Though we love Our Own the best,”
should never be pertinent in a wise man’s household.
Stop before assuming an oracular or infallible attitude—in other words, setting yourself up as a small god—before your own family. Ten to one, it is an assumption that you cannot maintain with any degree of consistency, and one which may entail a humiliating back-down when least expected.
