“For life is not to live, but to be well.”[[2]]
14. If a person be in perfect health, the very act of living is itself thorough enjoyment, the greatest this world can ever bestow. How needful it therefore is that all necessary instruction should be imparted to every Young Wife, and that proper means should, in every way, be used to insure health!
15. The judicious spending of the first year of married life is of the greatest importance in the making and in the strengthening of a wife’s constitution, and in preparing her for having a family. How sad it is, then, that it is the first twelve months that is, as a rule, especially chosen to mar and ruin her own health, and to make her childless! The present fashionable system of spending the first few months of married life in a round of visiting, of late hours, and in close and heated rooms, calls loudly for a change. How many valuable lives have been sacrificed to such a custom! How many miscarriages, premature births, and still-born children, have resulted therefrom! How many homes have been made childless—desolate—by it! Time it is that common sense should take the place of such folly! The present system is abominable, is rotten at the core, and is fraught with the greatest danger to human life and human happiness. How often a lady is, during the first year of her wifehood, gadding out night after night,—one evening to a dinner party, the next night to private theatricals, the third to an evening party, the fourth to the theater, the fifth to a ball, the sixth to a concert, until in some cases every night except Sunday night is consumed in this way,—coming home frequently in the small hours of the morning, through damp or fog, or rain or snow, feverish, flushed, and excited—too tired until the morning to sleep, when she should be up, out, and about. When the morning dawns she falls into a heavy, unrefreshing slumber, and wakes not until noon, tired, and unfit for the duties of the day! Night after night—gas, crowded rooms, carbonic acid gas, late hours, wine, and excitement are her portion. As long as such a plan is adopted the preacher preacheth but in vain. Night after night, week after week, month after month, this game is carried on, until at length either an illness or broken health supervenes. Surely these are not the best means to insure health and a family and healthy progeny! The fact is, a wife nowadays is too artificial; she lives on excitement; it is like drinking no wine but champagne, and, like champagne taken in excess, it soon plays sad havoc with her constitution. The pure and exquisite enjoyments of nature are with her too commonplace, tame, low, and vulgar. How little does such a wife know of the domestic happiness so graphically and sweetly described by that poet of the affections, Cowper:
“Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturb’d retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening, know.”
16. A fashionable lady might say, “I cannot give up fashionable amusements; I must enjoy myself as others do; I might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion.” To such a one I reply, “I myself am not a fashionist—it is not in my line; and as in the following pages I have to tell some plain unvarnished truths, my advice to you is, close this book at once and read no more of it, as such a work as this cannot be of the slightest use to you, however it might be to one who values health ‘as a jewel of great price’—as one of her most precious earthly possessions.” Really the subject is assuming such a serious aspect that it behooves a medical man to speak out plainly and unreservedly, and to call things by their right names. Fashion is oftentimes but another name for suicide and for baby-slaughter—for “massacre of the innocents!” God help the poor unfortunate little child whose mother is a votary of fashion, who spends her time in a round and whirl of fashionable life, and leaves her child to the tender mercies of servants, who “gang their ain gait,” and leave their little charge to do the same. Such a mother is more unnatural than a wild beast; for a wild beast, as a rule, is gentle, tender, and attentive to its offspring, scarcely ever for a moment allowing its young to be out of its sight. Truly, fashionable life deadens the feelings and affections. I am quite aware that what I have just now written will, by many fashionable ladies, be pooh-poohed, and be passed by as “the idle wind.” They love their pleasures far above either their own or their children’s health, and will not allow anything, however precious, to interfere with them; but still I have confidence that many of my judicious readers will see the truth and justness of my remarks, and will profit by them.
17. A round of visiting, a succession of rich living, and a want of rest during the first year of a wife’s life, often plays sad havoc with her health, and takes away years from her existence. Moreover, such proceedings often mar the chances of her ever becoming a mother, and then she will have real cause to grieve over her fatuity.
18. A French poet once sung that a house without a child is like a garden without a flower, or like a cage without a bird. The love of offspring is one of the strongest instincts implanted in woman; there is nothing that will compensate for the want of children. A wife yearns for them; they are as necessary to her happiness as the food she eats and as the air she breathes. If this be true—which, I think, cannot be gainsayed—how important is our subject,—one of the most important that can in this world engage one’s attention, requiring deep consideration and earnest study.