If you start out with a struggle to determine whether the will of the wife or the will of the husband shall have preference and pre-eminence, you may reasonably expect contention and strife for all the rest of your life. Let each seek to surpass the other in consideration, deference, and even self-denial, and the light and the joy which break upon your home in the beginning will abide to the end.
CHAPTER XI.
THE YOUNG WIFE AND MOTHERHOOD.
In a previous place we have spoken of the importance of industry and activity as important elements in a young wife, and as essential in securing success for the family, happiness in the home, and bodily health and vigor for the wife. An idle woman is always an unhappy woman, and she eventually succeeds in making every one unhappy about her. Her household duties are no misfortune, but a blessing.
But there is also another side to the question. Unthoughtful husbands do not always appreciate the magnitude of the duties which fall to the successful homemaker and homekeeper. Her duties are legion. We do not now speak of the wives who live in affluence, who never need to regard expense, who have only to indicate their wish in order to have it executed; but of the great multitude of wives and mothers who preside in the homes of the great middle class and of those who struggle with the economies and duties in homes of small means. The young husband should appreciate the fact that if the beautiful poetry which adorns the tombstones in our cemeteries could be translated into truthful prose they would tell of the thousands of martyrs to mending, sewing, baking, scrubbing—they would tell that the weapons by which hundreds of these housekeepers were slain were the broom, the sewing-machine, the cradle and the ladle. The Thirty Years' War was not so severe or so prolonged as the warfare which is waged from early morning till late at night by the great army of industrious wives, busy mothers and anxious homekeepers. If the boy has lost his book or the girl her bonnet, mother must help to find it. If the baby coughs or cries at night the father sleeps on oblivious of the fact, but the infant cannot stir without being heard by its anxious and attentive mother. If sickness compels, she bends in anxious vigils over the little life that lies in the cradle. If the breadwinner is brought home sick, it matters not how manifold the duties of the mother, no trained nurse can take the place of the wife at the bedside. In health and in sickness, in prosperity and adversity, during the day and at night, the wife and the mother finds herself the centre of duties, and very often of exactions.
In the demands which a young husband makes upon the young wife he should remember what are her duties and requirements during the day, in the home, in the church, in society, in the community; he should remember that physically she is the weaker vessel, that even when in her best physical condition sexual inclination is largely dormant, and when she is weary and worn she deserves to be treated with more than usual thoughtfulness and consideration.
Whatever demands the young husband makes upon his wife, whether as his helper or the participant of his joys, he should remember that even from the low standpoint of selfish interest and personal pleasure he wrongs himself, in addition to being unjust and oftentimes cruel to his wife, when he fails to take into consideration her physical condition and manifold duties.
If the young husband and wife desire to be permanently happy they dare not ignore the special purpose for which God instituted marriage. While marriage has other purposes, yet the great final purpose is the raising up of a family and the perpetuation of the human race. The injunction which God gave to Noah, when he said, "Be ye fruitful and multiply, bringing forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein," is to-day, and ever will be, in force. Among the Israelites barrenness was regarded as one of the greatest of misfortunes. In many instances it was regarded as a cause of personal shame, and even of dishonor. When Hannah went up to the Temple and prayed for a son she was only giving expression to the longings and desires which filled the heart of every barren Israelitish woman who had entered into the sacred bonds of marriage, and when God promised Abraham and Sarah that their seed should be in multitude as the stars in the heavens they regarded themselves as the recipients of one of the greatest blessings which God could bestow.