It is in every woman’s power to be a well-loved wife. She cannot exact it: she must win it. She has his affection to start upon. She must increase it, instead of allowing it to decrease. She must not go upon the principle that because she is his wife it is his duty to worship her. If she does, she will be bankrupt as far as his affection is concerned. Men are not made in that way, as I have said before, and you must take them as you find them if you take one at all. Many a wife has allowed her husband’s affection to die. She has fancied, maybe, that she was lowering her dignity to try to keep what she considered was her due. Nothing is our due of which we are not worthy. We are not worthy of a love we do not try to keep. Women who are exacting after marriage are generally the ones who tried the hardest to attract the man at first. It is generally the girl who runs after a man till she gets him who makes no effort after marriage to retain his love, and who talks the loudest about her “rights, and not grovelling at his feet,” if it is suggested that she do better.
Before she married she dressed for him. Nothing she owned was too pretty to put on when she knew he would see her. She was careful to be tidy in her person. She would never let him see a room in her home which was in disorder. She was courteous always. She never said an impatient word to him or before him. If he was cross, she bore it like an angel. She greeted him always when he came with a sweet smile and caress. She had loving words for him as she told him how she wanted to see him every minute since they had parted. She desired in every way to appear at her best before him. She hid every defect of temper or disposition.
After marriage she does not care how untidy she is when he comes home. She never thinks of dressing for him. She is not courteous to him. She has no loving word, and she never hesitates to speak a cross one to him. She has smiles yet for the outside world, but none for the man whom she has promised to love and honor. She talks to him as she would be ashamed to have any one hear her speak. She never bears with him. If he is cross, she is crosser. Is it any wonder she loses his love? She is not what he thought she was, or what he thought he was marrying. If he had seen her in her true colors before the fatal words were spoken, he never would have bound himself to her. The beautiful soul, the sweet smile that won him, are gone. The gentle spirit he fancied he detected, was a delusion. What he loved, he does not possess. He possesses an unwomanly wife, and that he did not woo. With a weak man there comes a break. He often seeks his happiness with another woman. A strong man endures in silence, growing old and sad, broken in his youth.
Ought this to be? There is no reason, because you have grown familiar to each other, you should not try to hide your temper as you did before. There is no reason, because he is “caught” and cannot get away from you, that you should cease to be attractive to him. You spread your net well. Now make the nest so attractive that he will be glad that he was “caught.” Be all that you led him to fancy you were.
Why should not a woman dress for her husband? Why should she not cultivate a sweet disposition for him and endeavor to make his home the happiest spot on earth? Why not try to banish from it every cloud, everything that will annoy or irritate? Is it of no use? It is of the greatest earthly use. It is a means of helping you both on to Heaven. If you must be selfish, remember it is making yourself happier to have your husband love you as he loves no other earthly being. Men, after all, are easily pleased—you found that out in your courtship days. They are easily managed too. A man will do almost everything for the wife that makes him happy. He is almost too much of a slave to her. She can do what she will to him. With him, getting her own way is only a matter of tact and sweetness. Husbands are almost all like the man in the fable of the wind and sun. The sun beat in the end. Warmth of love and sweetness of manner will gain a victory, where an ill-tempered insisting upon “rights” fails completely.
Ward McAllister says in his “Society as I Have Found It,” “My advice to all married women is to keep up flirting with their husbands as much after marriage as before; to make themselves as attractive after their marriage as they were when they captivated them; not to neglect their toilet, but rather to improve it: to be as coquettish and coy after they are bound together as before when no ties held them.”
Choice Selections in Poetry and Prose.
Compiled by
RHODUM L. GRIGGS.
INTRODUCTION.
We know that there is an unfortunate tendency in human nature to treat with levity the subject of love, courtship and marriage. But a moment’s consideration should convince you how utterly repugnant it is to all manly feelings to jest in these matters. They are the most serious questions of your life, as your weal or woe, and the weal and woe of those who come after you, depend in great measure, upon the wisdom and virtue with which you conduct your preparations for marriage. The whole tendency of such lightness is to cause the marriage relation to be lightly esteemed, and the true aim of courtship to be lost sight of, for unless you view it in its true light, with that sober earnestness which the subject demands, your courtship will be nothing more than a grand game of hypocrisy, resulting in misery the most deplorable.