As well as by want of heart.”
Our young wives should know these evils, and institute a crusade against them, so strong and forcible, that intelligent common sense shall govern in dress, and health and happiness be the blessed results, in the home.
CHAPTER III.
HEALTH OF THE YOUNG WIFE.
Health Insures Happiness.—Be Ambitious for Health.—The Scarcity of Perfectly Healthy Women.—Fashion to the Rescue.—The Boon of Health.—Necessity of Ventilation and Fresh Air.—Duties to the Home.—The Greatness of Woman’s Sphere.—In the Society Drift.—The Extreme of Wholly Avoiding Society.—Keeping in the Middle of the Road.—Pleasures and Recreations Taken Together.—Taking Time to Keep Young.—Mistakes Which Some Husbands Make.—Wrecks at the Beginning of Married Life.
To be a successful home-maker, the young wife must be well and know how to conserve her health. While the husband may be patience itself yet an invalid in the home, and that invalid the home-maker, is a serious drawback to happiness.
Sir James Paget, in a lecture on national health, says, “We want more ambition for health. I should like to see a personal ambition for health as keen as that for bravery, for beauty, or for success in our athletic games or field sports. I wish there were such an ambition for the most perfect national health, as there is for national renown in war, in art, or in commerce.”
“All women ought to know that invalidism, speaking generally—there are, of course, exceptions to this rule,—is a carefully cultivated condition, quite as truly as the magnificent condition of the prize-fighter, the race-horse or the gymnast.”
It has become a rare thing, to-day, to find a woman who counts herself perfectly healthy. Is it possible that womankind has become so susceptible to influence, that she imagines herself ill when she is not? We are more or less creatures of imitation, and yield to the force of our surroundings without a murmur. More than this, we must admit that among the many a semi-invalidism is considered genteel and attractive. True, in the last few years we have made some effort to rise above this, and a few have succeeded.