A Woman of the World: Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Cultivate the society of the women he admires. There is both wisdom and tact in such a course.

Wisdom in making an ideal a reality, and tact in avoiding any semblance of that most unbecoming fault—jealousy.

Let him see that you have absolute faith in your own powers to hold him, and that you respect him too much to mistake a frank admiration for an unworthy sentiment. Do not hesitate to speak with equal frankness of the qualities you admire in other men. Educate him in liberality and generosity, by example.

Allow no one to criticize him in your presence, and do not discuss his weaknesses with others. I have known wives to meet in conclaves, and dissect husbands for an entire afternoon. And each wife seemed anxious to pose as the most neglected and unappreciated woman of the lot. With all the faults of the sterner sex, I never heard of such a caucus of husbands.

Take an interest in your husband's business affairs, and sympathize with the cares and anxieties which beset him. Distract his mind with pleasant or amusing conversation, when you find him nervous and fagged in brain and body.

Yet do not feel that you must never indicate any trouble of your own, for it is conducive to selfishness when a wife hides all her worries and indispositions to listen to those of her husband. But since the work-a-day world, outside the home, is usually filled with irritations for a busy man, it should be a wife's desire to make his home-coming a season of anticipation and joy.

Do not expect a husband to be happy and contented with a continuous diet of love and sentiment and romance. He needs also much that is practical and commonplace mingled with his mental food.

I have known an adoring young wife to irritate Cupid so he went out and sat on the door-step, contemplating flight, by continual neglect of small duties.

There were never any matches in the receivers; when the husband wanted one he was obliged to search the house. The newspaper he had folded and left ready to read at leisure was used to light the fire, although an overfilled waste-basket stood near. The towel-rack was empty just when he wanted his bath, and his bedroom slippers were always kicked so far under the bed that he was obliged to crawl on all fours to reach them.

Then his loving spouse was sure to want to be "cuddled" when he was smoking his cigar and reading,—a triple occupation only possible to a human freak, with three arms, four eyes, and two mouths.