Even Dame Fashion herself has started a line of reforms that we trust will continue popular, until they have become fixtures. Short skirts, heavy shoes, natural waists are sought by a fairly large number to-day; but we dare not prophesy what would be the result did another turn of the wheel of fashion decree otherwise. The agitation must be increased until no backward step is possible along these lines, and until our daughters will desire comfort and healthfulness in dress, rather than fashion, and its frequent result, disease.
It is not enough that you as a wife, come to your marriage with good health, but that you do all in your power to conserve it in the days and months thereafter. It is safe to say, if from principle and wise judgment you learn in the new relations during the first year, how best to preserve and conserve your strength, you will carry this knowledge and practice with you through life.
First you must consider health a priceless boon, before you lose it.
In the new relations fix your habits of exercise and recreation carefully, and adhere to them. Learn how to rest, before you have reached the point nervously where rest is impossible. Do not presume too much upon your splendid health, and overdo daily. Stop before you have reached the limit of your strength.
If you have not learned about the necessity of good ventilation in the home, learn it at once, and let in daily the fresh, pure, life-giving sunshine and fresh air, room-fulls of it. Do not be afraid of adding to the fuel bill, for warm air charged with poison will heat less easily than pure, cold air which invites the warmth. Have plenty of fresh air in your sleeping rooms, for it is quite necessary to your rising clear-brained and sweet-tempered; and never forget that you will be largely responsible for the mental and moral atmosphere of the home.
Be careful and guarded as to your society demands, lest they steal your time and strength, and you be unfitted for the real duties of your home. Home must hereafter always be to you first and foremost in your heart and duty, if you fill your position truly.
Be not misled by the false philosophy of the day, that tends in many instances to underrate the home and its high blessedness in the life of woman.
An Eastern proverb tells us that, “The house rests upon the mother.” Just as soon as you take upon yourself the vows that make you wife, you become the mother of a home. Whether children ever come to bless it or not, you are its mother. Yet few women appreciate the importance or power of this position. With the grain of truth there is in it, there is a great deal of wasteful talk about woman, and her narrow sphere. Even though she be tied to the home and the little ones, yet her sphere is just as wide as she has a mind to make it. Four walls cannot shut in a large-hearted, loving woman. From the home blessed by her presence goes out a stream of mighty influence.
Put into a woman’s sphere all the depth and sweetness, and wisdom, and comfort, that the words, love, home, mother and children comprehend, and dare to call her sphere narrow if you will! To me it is so wide that I have seen few women who make themselves large enough to fill it, and these few are not found among those who talk of its narrowness and drudgery. The light of the home, the beacon for the husband, the teacher and guide for little feet, the sharer in all the secrets and joys, the consoler in all sorrows—how do the little annoyances and patience-trying cares dwindle into insignificance, when compared with these. What in public life can win her from a life like this, if she have it to do?
Thoughtlessly many young wives get into the society drift before they know it, and their best strength is wasted, and they are laying the foundations for a young old age. Nervously overwrought, hysteria comes in with its train of multitudinous ills, and destroys both her comfort and that of the home.