HOW TO BE 'HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED
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CHAPTER I.
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED*
How delicious is the winning Of a kiss at love's beginning, When two mutual hearts are sighing For the knot there's no untying^!
T. CAMPBELL.
Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married state. Look not therein for contentment greater than God will give, or a creature in this world can receive, namely, to be free from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, wholly clear, without clouds.— FULLER.
" How to be happy though married." This was the quaint title of one of Skelton's sermons, which would certainly cause a momentary cloud of indignation, not to say of alarm, to pass over the minds of a newly- married couple, should they discover it when skimming through a collection of old volumes on the first wet day of their honeymoon.
"Two young persons thrown together by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, re- ciprocate civilities, and go home to dream of each other. Finding themselves rather uncomfortable apart, they think they necessarily must be happy together." But there is no such necessity. In marriage the measure of our happiness is usually in proportion to our deserts.
No man e'er gained a happy life by chance, Or yawned it into being with a wish.
This, however, is just what many novices think they can do in reference to matrimony. They fancy that
6 HOW*TQ''BE HAUPY. THOUGH MARRIED.
it has a magic power of confeiiing happiness almost in spite "of themselves,-' and ?re. quite surprised when experience teaches them that domestic felicity, like everything else worth having, must be worked for — must be earned by patient endurance, self-restraint, and loving consideration for the tastes, and even for the faults, of him or her with whom life is to be lived.
And yet before the first year of married life has ended, most people discover that Skelton's subject, " How to be happy though married," was not an un- practical one. Then they know that the path upon which' they have entered may be strewn with thorns instead of with roses, unless mutual forbearance and mutual respect guard the way. The old bachelor who said that marriage was " a very harmless amusement " would not have pronounced such an unconditional judgment had he known more about it. Matrimony is a harmless and a happy state only when careful precaution is taken to defend the domain of the affections from harshness and petulance, and to avoid certain moral and physical pitfalls.
Like government, marriage must be a series of com- promises; and however warm the love of both parties may be, it will very soon cool unless they learn the golden rule of married life, "To bear and to forbear/' In matrimony, as in so many other things, a good beginning is half the battle. But how easily may good beginnings be frustrated through infirmity of temper and other causes, and then we must "tread those steps with sorrow which we might have trod with
joy."
"I often think," says Archdeacon Farrar, "that most of us in life are like many of those sightseers who saunter through this (Westminster) Abbey. Their listless look upon its grandeur and its memorials furnishes an illustration of the aspect which we present to higher powers as we wander restlessly through the solemn
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 7
minster-aisles of life. . . . We talk of human misery ; how many of us derive from life one-tenth part of what God meant to be its natural blessedness? Sit out in the open air on a summer day, and how many of us have trained ourselves to notice the sweetness and the multiplicity of the influences which are combining for our delight — the song of birds; the breeze beating balm upon the forehead; the genial warmth; -the delicate odour of ten thousand flowers ? "
What is said here of life in general. is also true of married life. We go through the temple of Hymen without noticing, much less appreciating, its beauty. Certainly few people gain as much happiness from their marriage as they might. They expect to find happiness without taking any trouble to make it, or they are so selfishly preoccupied that they cannot enjoy. In this way many a husband and wife only begin to value, each other when death is at hand to separate them.
In married life sacrifices must be ever going on if we would be happy. It is the power to make another glad which lights up our own face with joy. It is the power to bear another's burden which lifts the load from our own heart. To foster with vigilant, self- denying care the development of another's life is the surest way to bring into our own joyous, stimulating energy. Bestow nothing, receive nothing ; sow nothing, reap nothing; bear no burden of others, be crushed under your own. If many people are miserable though married, it is because they ignore the great law of self-sacrifice that runs through all nature, and expect blessedness from receiving rather than from giving. They reckon that they have a right to so much service, care, and tenderness from those who love them, instead of asking how much service, care, and tenderness they can give.
No knowledge is so well worth acquiring as the science of living harmoniously for the most part of a
* HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
life with another, which we might take as a definition of matrimony. This science teaches us to avoid fault- finding, bothering, boring, and other tormenting habits. "These are only trifling faults," you say. Yes, but trifles produce domestic misery, and domestic misery is no trifle.
Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from those trifles springs, Oh ! let the ungentle spirit learn from thence, A small unkindness is a great offence. To give rich gifts perhaps we wish in vain, But all may shun the guilt of giving pain.
Husband and wife should burn up in the bonfire of first-love all hobbies and " little ways " that could possibly prevent home from being sweet. How happy people are, though married, when they can say of each other what Mrs. Hare says of her husband in Memorials of a Quiet Life: "I never saw anybody so easy to live with, by whom the daily petty things of life were passed over so lightly ; and then there is a charm in the refinement of feeling which is not to be told in its influence upon trifles."
A married pair should be all the world to each other. Sydney Smith's definition of marriage is well known : - " It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them." Certainly those who go between deserve to be punished ; and in whatever else they may differ, married people should agree to defend themselves from the well-meant, perhaps, but irritating interference of friends. Above all, they should remember the proverb about the home- washing of soiled linen, for, as old Fuller said, "Jars concealed are half reconciled; while, if generally known, *tis a double task to stop the breach at home and men's mouths abroad."
,Why should love-making end with courtship, and
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 9
of what use are conquests if they are not guarded? If the love of a life-partner is of far more value than our perverse fancies, it is the part of wisdom to restrain these in order to keep that. A suggestion was recently made from an American pulpit that there was room for a new society which should teach husband and wife their duty to each other. "The first article of the constitution should be that any person applying for membership should solemnly covenant and agree that throughout married life he or she would carefully observe and practice all courtesy, thoughtfulness, and unselfish- ness that belong to what is known as the * engagement ' period. The second article should be that neither member of a conjugal partnership should listen to a single word of criticism of the other member from any relative whatever, even should the words of wisdom drop from the lips of father, mother, brother, or sister. The rules of the new society need not extend beyond these two, for there would be nothing in the conduct of members in good standing to require other special attention."
The wife, on her part, ought not to be less desirous than she was in the days of courtship of winning her husband's admiration, merely because she now wears upon her finger a golden pledge of his love. Why should she give up those pretty wiles to seem fair and pleasant in his eyes, that were suggested in love-dreams ? Instead of lessening her charms, she should endeavour to double them, in order that home may be to him who has paid her the greatest compliment in his power, the dearest and brightest spot upon earth — one to which he may turn for comfort when sick of business and the weary ways of men generally.
George Eliot tells us that marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest ; and it is undoubtedly true that much of the matrimonial discord that exists arises from the mutual struggle for supremacy. They go to church and say " I will," and then, perhaps, on the way home, one or other says "I won't," and that
io HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED,
begins it. " What is the reason," said one Irishman to another, " that you and your wife are always disagree- ing ? " " Because," replied Pat, " we are both of one mind — she wants to be master and so do I." How shall a man retain his wife's affections ? It is by not returning them? Certainly not. The secret of conjugal felicity is contained in this formula : demonstrative affection and self-sacrifice. A man should not only love his wife dearly, but he should tell her that he loves her, and tell her very often, and each should be willing to yield, not once or twice, but constantly, and as a practice to the other. Selfishness crushes out love, and most of the couples who are living without affection for each other, with cold and dead hearts, with ashes where there should be a bright and holy flame, have destroyed themselves by caring too much for themselves and too little for each other.
Each young couple that begins housekeeping on the right basis brings the Garden of Eden before man once more. There are they, two, alone ; love raises a wall between them and the outer world. There is no serpent there — and, indeed, he need never come, nor does he, so long as Adarn and Eve keep him at bay ; but too often the hedge of love is broken, just a little, by small discourtesies, little inattentions, small incivilities, that gradually but surely become wider and wider holes, until there is no hedge at all, and all sorts of monsters enter in and riot there.
Out of the very ripeness of life's core, A worm was bred.
The only real preservative against this worm is true religion. Unhappily for themselves the healthy and young sometimes fancy that they need not think of this. They forget that religion is required to ennoble and sanctify this present life, and are too liable to associate it exclusively with the contemplation of death. "So
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED, n
'a cried out — God, God, God ! three or four times : now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God ; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet." This advice, which Mrs. Quickly gave to Falstaff on his deathbed, reflects the thoughts of many people, but it was not sound advice. Certainly it would be cruel rather than kind to advise a young pair who have leaped into the dark of married life not to think of God. (He is a Saviour from trouble rather than a troubler, and the husband and wife who never try to serve Him will not be likely to serve each other or to gain much real happiness from their marriage.^
The following is related in the memoirs of Mary Somerville. When a girl she and her brother had coaxed their timid mother to accompany them for a sail. The day was sunny, but a stiff breeze was blowing, and presently the boat began to toss and roll. " George," Mrs. Fairfax called to the man in charge, " this is an awful storm) I fear we are in great danger; mind how you steer ; remember I trust in you ! " He replied, "Dinna trust in me, leddy; trust in God Almighty," In terror the lady exclaimed, " Dear me, is it come to that ! " To that it ought to come on the day of marriage quite as much as on the day of death. It is not only in times of danger and distress that we want God's presence, but in the time of our well-being, when all goes merry as a marriage bell. Live away from Him, and the happiness you enjoy to-day may become your misery to-morrow*
12 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. CHAPTER II.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE — MARRIED?
A bitter and perplexed " What shall I do?"
COLERIDGE.
Then, why pause with indecision When bright angels in thy vision Beckon thee to fields Elysian ?
LONGFELLOW.
To be or not to be — married? That is the question that may occur to readers of the last chapter. If so much precaution and preparation are necessary to ensure a harmless, not to say a happy marriage, is the game worth the candle ? Is it not better for the un- married to cultivate the contented state of mind of that old Scotch lady who said, " I wadna gie my single life for a* the double anes I ever saw ? "
The controversy as to whether celibacy or wedlock be the happier state is a very old one, perhaps as old as what may be called the previous question — whether life itself be worth living. Some people are very ingenious in making themselves miserable, no matter in what condition of life they find themselves : and there are a sufficient number of querulous celibates as well as over-anxious married people in the world to make us see the wisdom of the sage's words : " Whichever you do, whether you marry or abstain, you will repent." If matrimony has more pleasures and celibacy fewer pains, if loving be " a painful thrill, and not to love more painful still," it is impossible exactly to balance the happiness of these two states, containing respectively more pleasure and more pain, and less pleasure and less pain. M If hopes are dupes, fears may be liars."
It has been said of the state of matrimony that those who are in desire to get out, and those who are out,
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 13
wish to enter. The more one thinks on the matter in this spirit, the more one becomes convinced that the Scotch minister was by no means an alarmist who thus began an extempore marriage service: "My friends, marriage is a blessing to a few, a curse to many, and a great uncertainty to all. Do ye venture?" After a pause, he repeated, with great emphasis, " Do ye venture?" No objection being made to the venture, he then said, " Let's proceed."
With the opinion of this Scotch minister we may compare that of Lord Beaconsfield : "I have often thought that all women should marry, and no men." The Admiral of Castile said, that " he who marries a wife and he who goes to war must necessarily submit to everything that may happen." There will, however, always be young men and maidens who believe that nothing can happen in matrimony that is worse than never to be married at all.
When Joseph Alleine, who was a great student, married, he received a letter of congratulation from an old college friend, who said that he had some thoughts of following his example, but wished to be wary, and would therefore take the freedom of asking him to describe the inconveniences of a married life. Alleine replied, "Thou would'st know the inconveniences of a wife, and I will tell thee. First of all, whereas thou rises constantly at four in the morning, or before, she will keep thee till six ; secondly, whereas thou usest to study fourteen hours in the day, she will bring thee to eight or nine ; thirdly, whereas thou are wont to forbear one meal at least in the day for thy studies, she will bring thee to thy meat. If these are not mischief enough to affright thee, I know not what thou art" Most people will think that such "inconveniences of a wife" are the strongest arguments in her favour. Nearly all men, but especially bookish men, require the healthy common-sense influence of women to guide and sweetly order their lives. If we make fools of
14 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
ourselves with them, we are even greater fools without them.
With whatever luxuries a bachelor may be surrounded, he will always find his happiness incomplete unless he has a wife and children to share it.
Who does not sympathise with Leigh Hunt ? When in prison he wrote to the governor requesting that "his wife and children might be allowed to be with him in the daytime : that his happiness was bound tip in them, and that a separation in respect of abode would be almost as bad to him as tearing his body asunder."
To. be, or not to be — married ? This is one of those questions in reference to which the speculative reason comes to no certain conclusion. Solvttur ambulando. It ha§ nearly distracted some men, whose minds were sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. They have almost died of indecision, like the donkey between two exactly similar bundles of hay. An individual of this description, who was well known to the writer, after dropping into a letter pillar a proposal to a young lady, was seen a few moments afterwards endeavouring to extract with a stick the precious document. Failing in his attempt, the wretched mortal walked round and round the pillar, tortured with the recurrence of reasons against matrimony which he had lately argued away. Fortunately for both parties the lady refused the tempting offer.
And yet this hesitating lover was, perhaps, but a type of many young men of the age. Nowadays, it is often said they are giving up matrimony as if it were some silly old habit suited only to their grandfathers and grandmothers. The complaint is an old one. It was brought against Pagan youths more than eighteen hundred years ago, and yet the world has got along. But can all the blame be justly thrown upon the one sex to the exclusion of the other? Have thoughtless extravagance and ignorance of household economy on
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. • 15
the part of the ladies no share in deterring the men from making so perilous a venture ?
It is said that years ago in Burmah the ladies of the
; Court met in formal parliament to decide what should
(be done to cure the increasing aversion of young men
Jfo marriage. Their decision was a wise one. They
'•altered, by an order from the palace, the style of dress
to be worn by all honest women, reduced the ornaments
to be assumed by wives to the fewest and simplest
possible, and ordained that at a certain age women
v should withdraw from the frivolities of fashion and of
the fashionable world. Success was the result, and
young Burmah went up in a body to the altar.
Robert Burton, in his very quaint and interesting Anatomy of Melancholy gives an abstract of all that may be said "to mitigate the miseries of marriage/' by Jacobus de Voragine. " Hast thou means ? thou hast one to keep and increase it. Hast none? thou hast one to help to get it. Art in prosperity? thine happiness is doubled. Art in adversity ? she'll comfort, assist, bear a part of thy burden to make it more tolerable. Art at home ? she'll drive away melancholy. Art abroad? she looks after thee going from home, wishes for thee in thine absence, and joyfully welcomes thy return. There's nothing delightsome without society, no society so sweet as matrimony. The band of con- jugal love is adamantine. The sweet company of kinsmen increaseth, the number of parents is doubled, of brothers, sisters, nephews. Thou art made a father by a fair and happy issue. Moses curseth the barren- ness of matrimony — how much more a single life ! " " All this," says Burton, " is true ; but how easy a matter is it to answer quite opposite ! To exercise myself I will essay. Hast thou means ? thou hast one to spend it. Hast none? thy beggary is increased. Art in prosperity? thy happiness is ended. Art ia adversity? like Job's wife, she'll aggravate thy misery, vex thy soul, make thy burden intolerable. Art at
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home? she'll scold thee out of doors. Art abroad? If thou be wise, keep thee so ; she'll perhaps graft horns in thine absence, scowl on thee coming home. Nothing gives more content than solitariness, no solitariness like this of a single life. The band of marriage is adamantine — no hope of loosing it; thoi: art undone. Thy number increaseth ; thou shalt be devoured by thy wife's friends. Paul commends marriage, yet he prefers a single life. Is marriage honourable ? What an immortal crown belongs to virginity ! Tis a hazard both ways, I confess, to live single, or to marry ; it may be bad, it may be good \ as it is a cross and calamity on the one side, so 'tis a sweet delight, an incomparable happiness, a blessed estate, a most unspeakable benefit, a sole content, on the other — 'tis all in the proof."
In balancing this question Lord Bacon takes higher ground, and thinks of the effect of marriage and celibacy on a man in his public capacity. " He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to Fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of the greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason that those that have children should have greatest care of future times, unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. Some there are who, though they lead a single life, yet their thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times impertinences. Nay, there are some other that account wife and children but as bills of charges. Nay more, there are some foolish, rich, covetous men that take a pride in having no children because they may be thought so much the richer. For perhaps they have heard some talk : ' Such an one is a great rich man ; ' and another except to it : ' Yea, but he hath a great charge of children/ as if it were an abatement to his riches. But the most ordinary
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 17
cause of a single life is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds, which are so sensible of every restraint, as they will go near to think their girdles and garters to be bonds and shackles. Un- married men are best friends, best masters, best servants, but not always best subjects, for they are light to run away, and almost all fugitives are of that condition. A single life doth well with churchmen, for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool.'1
After all, these enumerations of the comparative advantages of marriage and celibacy are of little use, for a single glance of a pair of bright eyes will cause antimatrimonial arguments to go down like ninepins. The greatest misogamists have been most severely wounded when least expecting it by the darts of Cupid. Such a mishap, according to the anatomist of melancholy already quoted, had " Stratocles the physician, that blear-eyed old man. He was a severe woman-hater all his life, a bitter persecutor of the whole sex; he fore- swore them all still, and mocked them wheresoever he came in such vile terms, that if thou hadst heard him thou wouldst have loathed thine own mother and sisters for his word's sake. Yet this old doting fool was taken at last with that celestial and divine look of Myrilla, the daughter of Anticles the gardener, that smirking wench, that he shaved off his bushy beard, painted his face, I curled his hair, wore a laurel crown to cover his bald pate, and for her love besides was ready to run mad."
If it be true that " nothing is certain but death and taxes," we must not seek for mathematical demonstra- tion that the road we propose to travel on is the right one when we come to cross-roads in life. A certain amount of probability ought to make us take either one or the other, for not to resolve is to resolve. In reference to such questions as marriage versus celibacy, the choice of a wife, the choice of a profession, and many others,
i8 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
there must be a certain venture of faith, and in this unintelligible world there is a rashness which is not always folly.
There are, of course, many persons who, if they married, would be guilty of great imprudence, not to say of downright crime. When, however, two lovers — we emphasise the word — have sufficient means, are of suitable age, and are conscious of no moral, intellectual, or physical impediment, let them marry. It is the advice of some very wise men. Benjamin Franklin wrote to a young friend upon his marriage : " I am glad you are married, and congratulate you most cordially upon it. You are now in the way of becoming a useful citizen, and you have escaped the unnatural state of celibacy for life — the fate of many here who never intended it, but who, having too long postponed the change of their condition, find at length that it is too late to think of it, and so live all their lives in a situation that greatly lessens a man's value. An odd volume of a set of books bears not the value of its proportion to the set. What think you of the odd half of a pair of scissors ? It can't well cut anything — it may possibly serve to scrape a trencher ! "
Dr. Johnson says : " Marriage is the best state for man in general ; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state." Of marriage Luther observed : " The utmost blessing that God can confer on a man is the possession of a good and pious wife, with whom he may live in peace and tranquillity, to whom he may confide his whole posses- sions, even his life and welfare." And again he said: " To rise betimes and to marry young are what no man ever repents of doing." Shakespeare would not "admit impediments to the marriage of true minds. }>
The cares and troubles of married life are many, but are those of single life few ?Y The bachelor has no one on whom in ail cases he can rely. As a rule his expenses are as great as those of a married man, his life less
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 19
useful, and certainly it is less cheerful, " What a life to lead ! " exclaims Cobbett. " No one to talk to without going from home, or without getting some one to come to you ; no friend to sit and talk to, pleasant evenings to pass ! Nobody to share with you your sorrows or your pleasures ; no soul having a common interest with you ; all around you taking care of them- selves and no care of you ! Then as to gratifications, from which you will hardly abstain altogether — are they generally of little expense ? and are they attended with no trouble, no vexation, no disappointment, no jealousy even? and are they never followed by shame and remorse? To me no being in this world appears so wretched as an old bachelor. Those circumstances, those changes in his person and in his mind, which in the husband increase rather than diminish the attentions to him, produce all the want of feeling attendant on disgust; and he beholds in the conduct of the mercenary crowd that surround him little besides an eager desire to profit from that event the approach of which nature makes a subject of sorrow with him."
And yet it would be very wrong to hasten young men in this matter, for however miserable an old bachelor may be, he is far more happy than either a bad husband or the husband of a bad wife. What is one man's meat may be another man's poison. To some persons we might say, " If you marry you do well, but if you marry not you do better." In the case of others marriage may have decidedly the advantage. Like most other things marriage is good or bad according to the use or abuse we make of it. The applause that is usually given to persons on entering the matrimonial stage is, to say the least, premature. Let us wait to see how they will play their parts.
And here we must protest against the foolish and cowardly ridicule that is sometimes bestowed upon
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elderly men and women who, using the liberty of a free country, have abstained from marrying. Certainly some of them could give reasons for spending their lives outside the temple of Hymen that are far more honourable than the motives which induced their foolish detractors to rush in. Some have never found their other selves, or circumstances prevented the junction of these selves. And which is more honourable — a life of loneliness or a loveless marriage? There are others who have laid down their hopes of wedded bliss for the sake of accomplishing some good work, or for the sake of a father, mother, sister, or brother. In such cases celibacy is an honourable and may be a praiseworthy state.
To make "old maid" a term of reproach has mis- chievous results, and causes many an ill-assorted marriage. Girls have been hurried into marriage by the dread of being so stigmatised who have repented the step to their dying day. The sacredness of marriage and the serious responsibilities it brings are either ignored altogether or but lightly considered when marriage is represented as the only profession for women. There is no truth in Brigham Young's doctrine that only a woman sealed to a man in marriage can possibly be saved.
Let mothers teach their daughters that although a well-assorted marriage based upon mutual love and esteem may be the happiest calling for a woman, yet that marriage brings its peculiar trials as well as special joys, and that it is quite possible for a woman to be both useful and happy, although youth be fled, and the crowning joys of life — wife and motherhood — have passed her by or been voluntarily surrendered.
But this fact that celibacy has many consolations need not present the conclusion that as a rule married life is to be preferred.
" Jeanie," said an old Cameronian to his daughter,
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 21
who was asking his permission to marry — "Jeanie, it's a very solemn thing to get married. "
"I ken that, father," said the sensible lassie, "but it's a great deal solemner to be single."
Marriages are made in heaven: matrimony in itself is good, but there are fools who turn every blessing into a curse, like the man who said, " This is a good rope, I'll hang myself with it."
29 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. CHAPTER III.
MARRIAGE-MADE MEN.
A wife's a man's best peace, who, till he marries, Wants making up. . . .
She is the good man's paradise, and the bad's First step to heaven. — SHIRLEY.
Th* ever womanly
Draweth us onward ! — GOETHE.
This is well,
To have a dame indoors, that trims us up, And keeps us tight. — TENNYSON.
IF there be any man — women are seldom antimatri- monial bigots — who seriously doubts that the pros in favour of marriage more than counterbalance the cons, we commend to his consideration a few historical instances in which men have been made men in the highest sense of the word by marriage.
We do not endorse the exaggerated statement of Richter that " no man can live piously or die righteously without a wife," but we think that the chances of his doing so are considerably lessened. It is not good for a man to live alone with his evil thoughts. The checks and active duties of marriage are the best antidote, not only to an impure life, but to the dreaming and droning of a useless and purposeless one.
Certainly there are some men and women who without wives or husbands are marriage-made in the sense of having their love and powers drawn out by interesting work. They are married to some art or utility, or instead of loving one they love all. When this last ..is the case they go down into the haunts of evil, seek out the wretched, and spare neither themselves nor their money in their Christlike enthusiasm for
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 23
humanity. But the luxury of doing good is by no means confined to the celibate. On the contrary, the man with a wife and children in whose goodness and happiness he rejoices may be much better prepared to aid and sympathise with the erring and the suffering. The flood-gates of his affections may have been opened, and he may have become receptive to influences which had upon him beforetime little or no effect.
Not a few good and great men have confessed that they were marriage-made to a very considerable extent. The following testimony was given by De Tocqueville in a letter to a friend : " I cannot describe to you the happiness yielded in the long run by the habitual society of a woman, in whose soul all that is good in your own is reflected naturally, and even improved. When I say or do a thing which seems to me to be perfectly right, I read immediately in Marie's counten- ance an expression of proud satisfaction which elevates me; and so when my conscience reproaches me her face instantly clouds over. Although I have great power over her mind, I see with pleasure that she awes me; and so long as I love her as I do now I am sure that I shall never allow myself to be drawn into anything that is wrong."
Many a man has been shown the pathway to heaven by his wife's practice of piety. "My mercy," says Bunyanj'^was to light upon a wife whose father and mother were accounted godly. This woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor might be (not having so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us both), yet she had for her part The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of Piety, which her father had left her when he died." By reading these and other good books, helped by the kindly influence of his wife, Bunyan was gradually reclaimed from his evil ways, and led gently into the way of righteousness.
Nor does this companionship of good wives, which
24 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
enables men to gain " in sweetness and in moral height,'* cause them in the least degree to lose "the wrestling thews which throw the world.1' Quite the reverse. Weak men have displayed real public virtue, and strong men have been made stronger, because they had by their side a woman of noble character, who exercised a fortifying influence on their conduct. Lady Rachel Russell is one of the many celebrated women who have encouraged their husbands to suffer and be strong. She sat beside her husband day after day during his public trial, taking notes and doing everything to help him.
In the sixth year of his marriage Baxter was brought before the magistrates for holding a conventicle, and was sentenced to be confined in Clerkenwell Gaol. There he was joined by his wife, who affectionately nursed him during his imprisonment. " She was never so cheerful a companion to me," he says, "as in prison, and was very much against me seeking to be released."
There is a sort of would-be wit which consists in jesting at the supposed bondage of the married state. The best answer to this plentiful lack of wit is the fact that some of the best of men have kissed the shackles which a wife imposes, and have either thought or said, " If this be slavery, who'd be free?" Luther, speaking of his wife, said, " I would not exchange my poverty with her for all the riches of Croesus without her." In more recent times the French statesman, M. Guizot, says in his M&noires: "What I know to-day, at the end of my race, I have felt when it began, and during its continuance. Even in the midst of great undertakings domestic affections form the basis of life, and the most brilliant career has only superficial and incomplete enjoy- ments if a stranger to the happy ties of family and friendship." Not long ago, when speaking of his wife, Prince Bismarck said, " She it is who has made me what I am."
And there have been English statesmen who could
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 25
say quite as much. Burke was sustained amid the anxiety and agitation of public life by domestic felicity. " Every care vanishes," he said, "the moment I enter under my own roof!" Of his wife he said that she was " not made to be the admiration of everybody, but the happiness of one." A writer in a recent number of Leisure Hour relates the following of Lord Beaconsfield : "The grateful affection which he entertained for his wife, whom he always esteemed as the founder of his fortunes, is well known. She was in the habit of travelling with him on almost all occasions. A friend of the earl and ^of^jhe narrator of the incident was dining with him, when "one of the party — a Member of the House for many years, of a noble family, but rather remarkable for raising a laugh at his buffoonery than any admiration for his wisdom — had no better taste or grace than to expostulate with Disraeli for always taking the viscountess with him. 'I cannot understand it,' said the graceless man, 'for, you know, you make yourself a perfect laughing-stock wherever your wife goes with you.' Disraeli fixed his eyes upon him very expressively and said, ' I don't suppose you can understand it, B. — I don't suppose you can under- stand it, for no one could ever in the last and wildest excursions of an insane imagination suppose you to be guilty of gratitude ! ' "
It is true that there have been memorable celibates, but in the main the world's work has been done by the married. Fame and reward are powerful incentives, but they bear no comparison to the influence exercised by affection.
A man's wife and family often compel him to do his best ; and, when on the point of despairing, they force him to fight like a hero, not for himself, but for them. Curran confessed that when he addressed a court for the first time, if he had not felt his wife and children tugging at his gown, he would have thrown up his brief and relinquished the profession of a lawyer.
26 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
" It is often the case when you see a great man, like a ship, sailing proudly along the current of renown, that there is a little tug — his wife — whom you cannot see, but who is directing his movements and supplying the motive power/' The truth is well illustrated by the anecdote told of Lord Eldon, who, when he had received the Great Seal at the hands of the king, being about to retire, was addressed by his Majesty with the words, " Give my remembrance to Lady Eldon." The Chancellor, in acknowledging the condescension, inti- mated his ignorance of Lady Eldon's claim to such a notice. " Yes, yes," the king answered ; " I know how much I owe to Lady Eldon. I know that you would have made yourself a country curate, and that she has made you my Lord Chancellor." Sir Walter Scott and Daniel O'Connell, at a late period of their lives, ascribed their success in the world principally to their wives.
When Sir Joshua Reynolds — himself a bachelor — met the sculptor Flaxman shortly after his marriage, he said to him, "So, Flaxman, I am told you are married ; if so, sir, I tell you you are ruined for an artist." Flaxman went home, sat down beside his wife, took her hand in his, and said, " Ann, I am ruined for an artist." "How so, John? How has it happened? and who has done it?" "It happened," he replied, " in the church, and Ann Denman has done it." He then told her of Sir Joshua's remark — whose opinion was well known, and had often been expressed, that if students would excel they must bring the whole powers of their mind to bear upon their art, from the moment they rose until they went to bed ; and also, that no man could be a great artist unless he studied the grand works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and others, at Rome and Florence. " And I," said Flaxman, drawing up his little figure to its full height, " / would be a great artist." " And a great artist you shall be," said his wife, "and visit -Rome, too, if that
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 27
be really necessary to make you great." "But how?" asked Flaxman. " Work and economise? rejoined the brave wife ; " I will never have it said that Ann Denman ruined John Flaxman for an artist." And so it was determined by the pair that the journey to Rome was to be made when their means would admit. " I will go to Rome," said Flaxman, "and show the President that wedlock is for a man's good rather than his harm ; and you, Ann, shall accompany me.'*
After working for five years, aided by the untiring economy of his wife, Flaxman actually did accomplish his journey. On returning from Rome, where he spent seven years, conscious of his indebtedness to his wife, he devised an original gift as a memorial of his domestic happiness. He caused a little quarto book to be made, containing some score or so of leaves, and with pen and pencil proceeded to fill and embellish it. On the first page is drawn a dove with an olive branch in her mouth ; an angel is on the right and an angel on the left, and between is written, " To Ann Flaxman " ; below, two hands are clasped as at an altar, two cherubs bear a garland, and there follows an inscription to his wife, introducing the subject. Instead of finding his genius maimed by his alliance with Ann Denman, this eminent sculptor was ever ready to acknowledge that his subsequent success was in a great part marriage-made.
It was through the eyes of his wife that Huber, the great authority on bees, who was blind from his seven- teenth year, conducted his observations and studies. He even went so far as to declare that he should be miserable were he to regain his eyesight. "I should not know," he said, "to what extent a person in my situation could be beloved; besides, to me my wife is always young, fresh, and pretty, which is no light matter."
Sir William Hamilton of Edinburgh found his wife scarcely less helpful, especially after he had been stricken by paralysis through overwork. When he was
28 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
elected Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, and had no lectures on stock, his wife sat up with him night after night to write out a fair copy of the lectures from the rough sheets which he had drafted in the adjoining room. " The number of pages in her handwriting still preserved is," said Sir William's biographer, " perfectly marvellous."
Equally effective as a literary helper was Lady Napier, the wife of Sir William Napier, historian of the Peninsular War. She translated and epitomised the immense mass of original documents, many of them in cipher, on which it was in a great measure founded. When Wellington was told of the art and industry she had displayed in deciphering King Joseph's portfolios, and the immense mass of correspondence taken at Vittoria, he at first would hardly believe it, adding : * ' I would have given ^20,000 to any person who could have done this for me in the Peninsula." Sir William Napier's handwriting being almost illegible, Lady Napier made out his rough interlined manuscript, which he himself could scarcely read, and wrote out a fair copy for the printer; and all this vast labour she undertook and accomplished, according to the testimony of her husband, without having for a moment neglected the care and education of a large family.
The help and consolation that Hood received from his wife during a life that was a prolonged illness is one of the most affecting things in biography. He had such confidence in her judgment that he read and reread and corrected with her assistance all that he wrote. He used to trust to her ready memory for references and quotations. Many wives deserve, but few receive, such an I.O.U. as that which the grateful humorist gave to his wife in one of his letters when absent from her side. " I never was anything, Dearest, till I knew you, and I have been a better, happier, and more prosperous man ever since. Lay by that truth in lavender, Sweetest, and remind me of it when I fail. I am writing
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 29
warmly and fondly, but not without good cause. . . . Perhaps there is an afterthought that, whatever may befall me, the wife of my bosom will have the acknowledgment of her tenderness, worth, excellence — all that is wifely or womanly — from my pen."
Mr. Froude says of Carlyle's wife that " her hardest work was a delight to her when she could spare her husband's mind an anxiety or his stomach an indigestion. While he was absorbed in his work and extremely irritable as to every ailment or discomfort, her life was devoted to shield him in every possible way." In the inscription upon her tombstone Carlyle bore testimony that he owed to his wife a debt immense of gratitude. "In her bright existence she had more sorrows than are common, but also a soft invincibility, a capacity of discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart which are rare. For forty years she was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of worthy that he did or attempted. She died at London, April 2ist, 1866, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if gone out."
What an influence women have exercised upon teachers of religion and philosophy ! When no one else would encourage Mahomet, his wife Kadijah listened to him with wonder, with doubt. At length she answered : "Yes, it was true this that he said." We can fancy, as does Carlyle, the boundless gratitude of Mahomet, and how, of all the kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke was the greatest. " It is certain," says Novalis, " my con- viction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it." It is a boundless favour. He never forgot this good Kadijah. Long afterwards, Ayesha, his young favourite wife, a woman who indeed dis- tinguished herself among the Moslem by all manner of qualities, through her whole long life, this young brilliant Ayesha was one day questioning him : " Now am I not
30 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
better than Kadijah? she was a widow; old, and had lost her looks : you love me better than you did her ? " " No, by Allah ! " answered Mahomet : " No, by Allah ! She believed in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend, and she was that ! "
It will suffice to hint at the scientific value of the little that has been disclosed respecting Madame Clothilde de Vaux in elucidating the position of Auguste Comte as a teacher. Some may think that John Stuart Mill first taught his wife and then admired his own wisdom in her. His own account of the matter is very different, as we learn from the dedication of his essay On Liberty :
"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings — the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward — I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision ; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable ot interpret- ing to the world one-half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom."
In a speech upon women's rights, a lady orator is said to have exclaimed, " It is well known that Solomon owed his wisdom to the number of his wives ! " This is too much : nevertheless, Sir Samuel Romilly gave the experience of many successful men when he said that there was nothing by which through life he had more
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 31
profited than by the just observations and the good opinion of his wife.
Most people are acquainted with husbands who have lost almost all self-reliance and self-help because their wives have been only too helpful to them. Trollope and George Eliot faithfully portrayed real life in their stories when they put the reins into the hands of good wives and made them drive the domestic coach, to the immense advantage and comfort of the husbands, who never suspected the real state of the case. No man has so thoroughly as Trollope brought into literature the idea which women have of men — creatures that- .have to be looked after as grown-up little boys ; interesting, piquant, indispensable, but shiftless, headstrong, and at bottom absurd.
But this consciousness which good wives have of the helplessness of husbands renders them all the more valuable in their eyes. Before Weinsberg surrendered to its besiegers, the women of the place asked permission of the captors to remove their valuables. The per- mission was granted, and shortly after the women were seen issuing from the gates carrying their husbands on their shoulders. Indeed it would be impossible to relate a tenth part of the many ways in which good wives have shown affection for and actively assisted their wedded lords. Knowing this to be the case, we were not surprised to read some time since the following piece of Irish news: "An inquiry was held at Mullingar on Wednesday respecting Mr. H. Smythe's claim of ;£io,ooo as compensation for the loss of his wife, who was shot whilst returning from church. The claim was made under the nineteenth section of the Crime Prevention Act, Ireland." The result of the inquiry we do not know, but for ourselves we think that ;£ 10,000 would barely compensate for the loss of a really good article in wives.
Some one told an old bachelor that a friend had gone blind. "Let him marry, then," was the crusty reply;
32 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
" let him marry, and if that doesn't open his eyes, then his case is indeed hopeless." But this, we must remember, was not the experience of a married man.
A friend was talking to Wordsworth of De Quincey's articles about him. Wordsworth begged him to stop ; he hadn't read them, and did not wish to ruffle himself about them. "Well," said the friend, " I'll tell you only one thing he says, and then we'll talk of other things. He says your wife is too good for you." The old poet's dim eyes lighted up, and he started from his chair crying with enthusiasm, " And that's true ! There he's right ! " his disgust and contempt visibly moderating. Many a man whose faith in womankind was weak before marriage can a few years afterwards sympathise most fully with this pathetic confession of the old poet.
A Scotch dealer, when exhorting his son to practice honesty on the ground of its being the "best policy/' quietly added, " I hae tried baitfy" So it is in reference to matrimony and celibacy. -The majority of those who have " tried baith " are of opinion that the former is the best policy^
It would be 'absurd to assert that the marriage state is free from care and anxiety; but what of that? Is not care and trouble the condition of any and every state of life ? He that will avoid trouble must avoid the world. " Marriage," says Dr. Johnson, " is not commonly unhappy, but as life is unhappy." And the summing up, so to speak, of this great authority is well known—" Marriage has many pains, but celibacy no pleasures."
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 33 CHAPTER IV
THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.
Go, draw aside the curtains, and discover The several caskets to this noble prince : — Now make your choice. — SHAKESPEARE.
If, as Plutarch adviseth, one must eat modiutn satis, a bushel of salt, with him before he choose his friend, what care should be had in choosing a wife — his second self! How solicitous should he be to know her qualities and behaviour ! and, when he is assured of them, not to prefer birth, fortune, beauty, before bringing up and good conditions. — ROBERT BURTON.
WHETHER a man shall be made or marred by marriage greatly depends upon the choice he makes of a wife. Nothing is better than a good woman, nor anything worse than a bad one.
The idea of the great electrician Edison's marrying was first suggested by an intimate friend, who made the point that he needed a mistress to preside over his large house, which was being managed by a house- keeper and several servants. Although a very shy man, he seemed pleased with the proposition, and timidly inquired whom he should marry. The friend somewhat testily replied, " Any one ; " that a man who had so little sentiment in his soul as to ask such a question ought to be satisfied with anything that wore a petticoat and was decent.
Woe to the man who follows such careless advice as this, and marries "any one," for what was said by the fox to the sick lion might be said with equal truth to Hymen; "I notice that there are many prints of feet entering your cave, but I see no trace of any returning." Before taking the irrevocable step choose well, for B your choice though brief is yet endless. And, first,
34 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
we make the obvious suggestion that it is useless to seek perfection in a wife, even though you may fancy yourself capable of giving an adequate return as did the author of the following advertisement : " Wanted by a Young Gentleman just beginning Housekeeping, a Lady between Eighteen and Twenty-five Years of Age, with a good Education, and a Fortune not less than Five Thousand Pounds; Sound Wind and Limb, Five Feet Four Inches without her shoes; Not Fat, nor yet too lean ; Good Set of Teeth ; No Pride nor Affectation ; Not very Talkative, nor one that is deemed a Scold ; but of a spirit to Resent an Affront ; of a Charitable Disposition ; not Over-fond of Dress, though always Decent and Clean ; that will entertain her Husband's Friends with Affability and Cheerfulness, and Prefer his Company to Public Diversions and gadding about; one who can keep his secrets, that he may open his Heart to her without reserve on all Occasions; that can extend domestic Expenses with Economy, as Prosperity advances, without Ostentation ; and Retrench them with Cheerfulness, if occasion should require. Any Lady disposed to Matrimony, answering this Description, is desired to direct for Y. Z., at the Baptist's Head Coffee-house, Aldermanbury. N.J3. — The Gentleman can make adequate Return, and is, in every Respect, deserving a Lady with the above Qualifications."
This reminds us of the old lady who told her steward she wished him to attend a neighbouring fair in order to buy her a cow. She explained to him that it must be young, well-bred, fine in the skin, a strawberry in colour, straight in the back, and not given to breaking through fences when it smelt clover on the other side ; above all. it was not to cost more than ten pounds. The steward, who was a Scotchman, and a privileged old servant, bowed his head and replied reverently, " Then, my lady, I think ye had better kneel down and pray for her, for ye'll get her nae other way, I'm thinkin',"
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 35
While the possession of a little money is by no means a drawback, those do not well consult their happiness who marry for money alone.
In many a marriage made for gold,
The bride is bought — and the bridegroom sold.
Though Cupid is said to be blind, hejs a, .better .. guide than the rules of arithmetic. We have false ideas of happiness. What will make me happy — contented ? " Oh, if I were rich, I should be happy ! " A gentle- man who was enjoying the hospitalities of the great millionaire and king of finance, Rothschild, as he looked at the superb appointments of the mansion, said to his host, " You must be a happy man ! n " Happy ! " said he, " happy ! I happy — happy ! " " Aye, happy ! " " Let us change the subject." John Jacob Astor, of America, was also told that he must be a very happy man, being so rich. "Why," said he, "would you take care of my property for your board and clothes ? That's all I get for it." In taking a dowry with a wife "thou losest thy liberty," says an old writer: "she will ride upon thee, domineer as she list, wear the breeches in her oligarchical government, and beggar thee besides."
(Better to have a fortune in your wife than with her.) "My wife has made my fortune," said a gentleman of great possessions, "by her thrift, prudence, and cheerfulness, when I was just beginning." " And mine has lost my fortune," answered his companion bitterly, "by useless extravagance, and repining when I was doing well.** The girl who brings to her husband a large dowry may also bring habits of luxury learned hi a rich home. She may be almost as incapable of understanding straitened circumstances as was the lady of the court of Louis XVI., who, on hearing of people starving, exclaimed, " Poor creatures 1 No brfead to eat ! Then let them eat cakes I "
36 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
Nor is it wise to marry for beauty alone:) as even the finest landscape, seen daily, becomes monotonous, so does the most beautiful face, unless a beautiful nature shines through it. The beauty of to-day becomes commonplace to-morrow; whereas goodness, displayed through the most ordinary features, is perennially lovely. Moreover, this kind of beauty improves with age, and time ripens rather than destroys it. No man is so much to be pitied as the husband of a " profes- sional beauty." Yet beauty, when it betokens health, or when it is the outward and visible sign of an in- ward and spiritual grace, is valuable, and has a great power of winning affection.
Above all things do not marry a fool who will shame you and reveal your secrets. For ourselves we do not believe the first part at least of Archbishop Whately's definition of woman : " A creature that does not reason, and that pokes the fire from the top." The wife who does not and cannot make use of reason to overcome the daily difficulties of domestic life, and who can in no sense be called the companion of her husband, is a mate who hinders rather than helps. Sooner or later a house- hold must fall into the hands of its women, and sink or swim according to their capacities. It is hard enough for a man to be married to a bad woman ; but for a man who marries a foolish woman there is no hope.
" One must love their friends with all their failings, but it is a great failing to be ill," and therefore unless you are one of those rare men who would never lose patience with a wife always in pain, when choosing you should think more of a healthy hue than of a hectic hue, and far more of good lungs than of a tightly-laced waist. "See that she chews her food well, and sets her foot down firmly on the ground when she walks, and you're all right."
As regards the marriageable age of women we may quote the following little conversation : " No woman is worth looking at after thirty," said young Mrs. A.,
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 37
a bride with all the arrogant youthfulness- of twenty-one summers. " Quite true, my dear," answered Lady D., a very pretty woman some ten or fifteen years older; "nor worth listening to before."
Please yourself, good sir ! only do not marry either a child or an old woman. Certainly a man should marry to obtain a friend and companion rather than a cook and housekeeper ; but yet that girl is a prize indeed who has so' well prepared herself for the business of wifehood as to be able to keep not only her husband company, but her house in good order. " If that man is to be regarded as a benefactor of his species who makes two stalks of corn grow where only one grew before, not less is she to be regarded as a public benefactor who econo- mises and turns to the best practical account the food products of human skill and labour."
Formerly a woman's library was limited to a Bible and a cookery-book. This curriculum has now been considerably extended, and it is everywhere acknowledged that "chemistry enough to keep the pot boiling, and geography enough to know the different rooms in her house," is not science enough for women. It is surely not impossible, however, for an intending husband to find a girl who can make her higher education compatible with his comforts, who can when necessary bring her philosophy down to the kitchen. Why should literature unfit woman for the everyday business of life ? It is not so with men. You see those of the most cultivated minds constantly devoting their time and attention to the most homely objects.
The other day, speaking superficially and uncharitably, a person said of a woman, whom he knew but slightly, " She disappoints me utterly. How could her husband have married her?V She is commonplace and stupid." " Yes/' said a friend reflectively, " it is strange. She is not a brilliant woman, she is not even an intellectual one ; but there is such a thing as a genius for affection, and she has it. It has been good for her husband that
38 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
he married her." In the sphere of home the graces of gentleness, of patience, of generosity, are far more valuable than any personal attractions or mental gifts and accom- plishments. They contribute more to happiness and are the source of sympathy and spiritual discernment. For does not the woman who can love see more and under- stand more than the most intellectual woman who has no heart ?
A vacancy in the floor-sweeping department of a public institution having been advertised, the testimonials to the intellectual and moral eminence of an old woman were overwhelming; but ^fter the election it appeared she had only one arm ! 'Not less unfitted to be a wife is the woman who, with every other qualification, has no genius for affection./
' Dress is one of the little things that indicate character. A refined woman will always look neat; but, on the other hand, she will not bedizen and bedeck herself with a view to display. Again, there is no condition of life in which industry in a wife is not necessary to the happi- ness of a family. A lazy mistress makes lazy servants, and, what is worse, a lazy mother makes lazy children.
" But how," asks Cobbett, " is the purblind lover to ascertain whether she, whose smiles have bereft him of his senses — how is he to judge whether the beloved object will be industrious or lazy ? " In answer to this question several outward and visible signs are suggested, such as early rising, a lively, distinct utterance, a quick step, " the labours of the teeth ; for these correspond with those of the other members of the body, and with the operations of the mind."
Then we are told of a young man in Philadelphia, who, courting orie of three sisters, happened to be on a visit to her, when all the three were present, and when one said to the others, "I wonder where our needle is." Upon which he withdrew, as soon as was consistent with politeness, resolved never to think more of a girl who possessed a needle only in partnership, and who, it
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 39
appeared, was not too well informed as to the place where even that share was deposited.
It would be impossible even to allude to every point of character that should be observed in choosing a wife. Frugality, or the power to abstain from unnecessary expenditure, is very important, so is punctuality. As to good temper, it is a most difficult thing to ascertain beforehand ; smiles are so easily put on for the lover's visits. We know the old conundrum — why are ladies like bells? Because you never know what metal they are made of until you ring them. An ingenuous girl thus alluded to the change that is frequently percep- tible after marriage. " Your future husband seems very exacting : he has been stipulating for all sorts of things," said her mother to her. " Never mind, mamma/1 said the affectionate girl, who was already dressed for the wedding ; " these are his last wishes."
There is, however, one way of roughly guessing the qualifications of a girl for the most responsible position of a wife. Find out the character of her mother, and whether the daughter has been a good one and a good , sister. Ask yourself, if you respect as well as admire/ her, and remember the words of Fichte : " No true and enduring love can exist without esteem; every other draws regret after it, and is unworthy of any noble soul."
Thackeray said of women : " What we (men) want for the most part is a humble, flattering, smiling, child- loving, tea-making being, who laughs at our jokes however old they may be, coaxes and wheedles us in our humburs, and fondly lies to us through life." And he says of a wife : " She ought to be able to make your house pleasant to your friends; she ought to attract them to it by her grace. Let it be said of her, ' What an uncommonly nice woman Mrs. Brown is ! ' f Let her be, if not clever, an appreciator of cleverness.) Above all, let her have a sense of hiimosar, for a woman without a laugh in her is tHe greatest bore in existence/' It is, we think, only very weak men who would wish their
40 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
wives to " fondly lie " to them in this way. Better to be occasionally wound up like an eight-day clock by one's wife and made to go right. There is no one who gives such wise and brave advice as a good wife. She is another, a calmer and a better self. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, for he knows that when her criticism is most severe it is spoken in love and for his own good. Lord Beaconsfield described his wife as " the most severe of critics, but a perfect wife."
Burns the poet, in speaking of the qualities of a good wife, divided them into ten parts. Four of these he gave to good temper, two to good sense, one to wit, one to beauty — such as a sweet face, eloquent eyes, a fine person, a graceful carriage ; and the other two parts he divided amongst the other qualities belonging to or attending on a wife — such as fortune, connections, education (that is, of a higher standard than ordinary), family blood, etc. ; but he said, " Divide those two degrees as you please, only remember that all these minor proportions must be expressed by fractions, for there is not any one of them that is entitled to the dignity of an integer."
Let us add the famous advice given by Lord Burleigh to his son : " When it shall please God," said he, " to bring thee to man's estate, use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife, for from thence will spring all thy future good or evil. And it is an action of thy life, like unto a stratagem of war, wherein a man can err but once. . . . Inquire diligently of her disposition, and how her parents have been inclined in their youth. Let her not be poor, how generous (well-born) soever; for a man can buy nothing in the market with gentility. Nor choose a base and uncomely creature altogether for wealth, for it will cause contempt in others, and loathing in thee. Neither make choice of a dwarf or a fool, for by the one thou shalt beget a race of pigmies, while the other will be thy continual disgrace, and it will yirke (irk) thee to hear her talk.
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 41
For thou shalt find it to thy great grief that there is nothing more fulsome than a she-fool."
The ideal wife is either what Crashaw calls an " impossible she," or —
Somewhere in the world must be She that I have prayed to see, She that Love assigns to me.
But then- Shall we ever, ever meet ? Shall I find in thee, my sweet, Visions true and life complete?
To the old question "Who can ftndt" it may too often be replied, Who seeks " a virtuous woman " ? Is she wealthy? is she pretty? is she talented? are questions asked more frequently than Is she good, sensible, industrious, affectionate? And yet that man takes to himself one of the bitterest of earth's curses who marries carelessly instead of seeking with all diligence for those qualities in a wife that are the foundation of lasting happiness.
A minister's wife falling asleep in church, her husband thus addressed her : " Mrs. B., a' body kens that when I got ye for my wife I got nae beauty ; yer frien's ken that I got nae siller ; and if I dinna get God's grace I shall hae a puir bargain indeed." If men would seek for wives women with the grace of God, if they would choose them as they do their clothes, for qualities that will last, they would get much better bargains.
One reason for this carelessness about the character of a wife may be found in the prevailing opinion that there is little or no room for choice in matters matri- monial. Sir John More (father of the Chancellor, Sir Thomas) was often heard to say, " I would compare the multitude of women which are to be chosen for wives unto a bag full of snakes, having among them a single
42 ROW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
eel. Now, if a man should put his hand into this bag, he may chance to light on the eel ; but it is a hundred to one he shall be stung by a snake."
Perhaps the lottery theory of marriage was never stated more strongly or with greater cynicism ; but is it true? If it were, to expend care and attention in choosing a wife would be to labour in vain. If, however, marriage is by no means such an affair of chance, a prudent choice may prevent a man from being stung by a snake, and may give him a goodly eel as his marriage portion. The important thing to do is to keep well in mind the fact that a man's prospect of domestic felicity does_npt depend upon the face, the fortune, or the accomplishmentsTof "nTs wife, but upon her character. The son of Sirach says that he would rather dwell with 'a lion and a dragon than to keep house with a wicked woman. "He that hath hold of her is as though he held a scorpion. A loud crying woman and a scold shall be sought out to drive away the enemies." On the other hand, "the grace of a wife delighteth her, husband, and her discretion will fatten his bones, f A siknt and loving woman is a gift of the Lord; and there is nothing so much worth as a mind well instructed." )
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 43 CHAPTER V.
THE CHOICE OF A HUSBAND.
How shall I know if I do choose the right ?
SHAKESPEARE.
Go,d, the best maker of marriages, -bless you ! — Ibid.
And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy ; for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places ; for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater ; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall ; a straight back will stoop ; a black beard will turn white ; a curled pate will grow bald ; a fair face will wither ; a full eye will wax hollow ; but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon ; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright, and never changes, but keeps his course truly. — Ibid.
" THEY that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in t'rie world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman, indeed, ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband ; she must dwell upon her sorrow and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity hath produced ; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkindness. And though the man can run from many hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again ; and when he sits among his neighbours he remembers the objection that is in his bosom and he sighs deeply. The boys and the pedlars
44 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
and the fruiterers shall tell of this man when he is carried to his grave that he lived and died a poor, wretched person."
In these words Jeremy Taylor puts before men and women the issues of choice in matrimony. What, how- ever, concerns us in this chapter is that "a woman ventures most" " Love is of man's life a thing apart, 'tis woman's whole existence." How important that a treasure which is dear as life itself should be placed in safe keeping ! And yet so blind is love that defects often seem to be virtues, deformity assumes the style of beauty, and even hideous vices have appeared under an attractive form.
In Shakespeare's play Cleopatra speaks of an old attachment which she had lived to despise as having arisen in her "salad days," when she was green in judgment. In extreme youth love is especially blind, and for this, as well as for other reasons, girls, who are yet at school, do not consult their best interests when they allow love to occupy their too youthful minds. It prevents the enjoyment of happy years of maiden- hood, and sometimes leads to marriage before the girl is fit, either physically, mentally, or domestically, for the cares of married life.
"I believe," says R. W. Dale, of Birmingham, "in falling in love. The imagination should be kindled and the heart touched ; there should be enthusiasm and even romance in the happy months that precede marriage, and something of the enthusiasm and romance should remain to the very end of life, or else the home is wanting in its perfect happiness and grace. But take my word for it, solid virtues are indispensable to the security and happiness of a home."
You would not like to live with a liar, with a thief, with a drunkard, for twenty or thirty years. A lazy man will make but a weak band or support for his and your house; so will one deficient in fortitude — that is, the power to bear pain and trouble without whining.
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 45
Beware of the selfish man, for though he may be drawn out of selfishness in the early weeks of courtship, he will settle back into it again when the wear and worry of life come on. And remember that a man may have the roots of some of these vices in him and yet be ex- tremely agreeable and good-looking, dress well, and say very pretty and charming things. " How easy is it for the proper-false in women's waxen hearts to set their forms ! "
In their haste to be married many women are too easily satisfied with the characters of men who may offer themselves as husbands. They aim at matrimony in the abstract; not the man, but any man. They would not engage a servant if all they knew of her were that she had, as a housemaid lately advertised, " a fortnight's character from her last place " ; but with even less information as to their characters they will accept husbands and vow to love, honour, and obey them ! In comparison how much more honourable and how much less unloved and unloving is the spinster's lot ! Women marry simply for a home because they have not been trained to fight the battle of life for themselves, and because their lives are so dull and stagnant that they think any change must be for the better.
A friend — let us say Barlow — was describing to Jerrold the story of his courtship and marriage; how his wife had been brought up in a convent, and was on the point of taking the veil, when his presence burst upon her enraptured sight Jerrold listened to the end of the story, and by way of comment said, " Ah ! she evidently thought Barlow better than nun." When girls have been given work in the world they do not think that any husband is better than none, and they have not time to imagine themselves in love with the first man who proposes. How often is it the case that people think themselves in love when in fact they are only idle )
46 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
There are hearts all the better for keeping; they become mellower and more worth a woman's acceptance than the crude, unripe things that are sometimes gathered — as children gather green fruit— to the dis- comfort of those who obtain them. A husband may be too young to properly appreciate and take care of a. wife. And yet perhaps the majority of girls would rather be a young man's slave than an old man's darling. "My dear," said a father to his daughter, " I intend that you should be married, but not that you should throw yourself away on any wild, worthless boy ; you must marry a man of sober and mature age. What do you think of a fine, intelligent husband of fifty?" "I think two of twenty-five would be better, papa."
Prophecies as to the probable result of a marriage are as a rule little to be trusted. It was so in the case of the celebrated Madame Necker. She had been taken to Paris to live with a young widow, to whom Necker — a financier from Geneva — came to pay his addresses. The story goes that the widow, in order to rid herself of her admirer, got him to transfer his addresses to her young companion, saying to herself, "they will bore each other to death, that will give them something to do." The happy pair, however, had no such fore- boding. "I am marrying a man," wrote the lady, "whom I should believe to be an angel, if his great love for me did not show his weakness." In his way the husband was equally satisfied. " I account myself as happy as it is possible for a man to be," he wrote to a mutual friend ; and to the end of the chapter there was no flaw in that matrimonial life.
Never to marry a genius was the advice of Mrs. Carlyle. " I married for ambition. Carlyle has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever imagined of him, and I am miserable." As the supply of geniuses is very limited, this advice may seem superfluous. It is not so, however, for there is enough and to spare of men
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 47
who think they are geniuses, and take liberties accord- T ingly. These are very often only sons of fond but foolish mothers, who have persuaded them that they are not made of common clay, and that the girls who get them will be blessed. From such a blessing young women should pray to be delivered.
Perhaps it may be said that though it is easy to write about choosing a husband, for the majority of English girls, at least, there is but little choice in the matter. Dickens certainly told an American story — very American — of a young lady on a voyage, who, being intensely loved by five young men, was advised to "jump overboard and marry the man who jumped in after her." Accordingly, next morning the five lovers being on deck, and looking very devotedly at the young lady, she plunged into the sea. Four of the lovers immediately jumped in after her. When the young lady and four lovers were out again, she said to the captain, "What am I to do with them now, they are so wet?" "Take the dry one." And the young lady did, and married him. How different is the state of affairs on this side of the Atlantic, where, if a young woman is to be married, she must take not whom she will, but whom she can. " Oh me, the word choose ! I may neither choose whom I would, nor refuse whom I dislike." But is it necessary to marry? Far better to have no husband than a bad one.
There is a great deal of human nature in the account which Artemus Ward gives of the many affecting ties which made him hanker after Betsy Jane. " Her father's farm jined our'n ; their cows and our'n squencht their thurst at the same spring; our old mares both had stars in their forrerds ; the measles broke out in both famerlies at nearly the same period ; our parients (Betsy's and mine) slept reglarly every Sunday in the same meetin-house, and the nabers used to obsarve, ' How thick the Wards and Peasleys air ! ' It was a surblime site, in the spring of the year, to see our several mothers (Betsy's and
48 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
mine) with their gowns pin'd up so thay couldn't sile 'em affecshunitly bilin sope together and aboozin the nabers."
In this matter more than in most others "we do not will according to our reason, we reason according to our will." True desire, the monition of nature, is much to be attended to. But always we are to dis- criminate carefully between true desire and false. The medical men tell us we should eat what we truly have an appetite for; but what we only falsely have an appetite for we should resolutely avoid. Ought not choice in matrimony to be guided by the same principle ?
Above all things young ladies should ask God, the best maker of marriages, to direct their choice aright.
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 49
CHAPTER VI.
ON MAKING THE BEST OF A BAD MATRIMONIAL BARGAIN.
How poor are they who have not patience ! What wound did ever heal, but by degrees ?
SHAKESPEARE.
E'en now, in passing" through the garden walks, Upon the ground I saw a fallen nest, Ruined and full of ruin ; and over it, Behold, the uncomplaining' birds, already Busy in building a new habitation.
LONGFELLOW.
+
BUT "the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley." We are none of us infallible, " not even the youngest." When the greatest care has been taken in choosing, people get bad matrimonial bargains, From the nature of the case this must often happen. If not one man in a thousand is a judge of the points of a horse, not one in a million understands human nature. And even if a young man or woman did understand human nature, there are before marriage, as a rule, opportunities of gaining only the slightest knowledge of the character of one who is , to be the weal or woe of a new home. It is related in ancient history, or fable, that when Rhodope, a fashionable Egyptian beauty, was engaged bathing, an eagle stole away one of her shoes, and let it fall near Psammetichus the king. Struck with the pretty shoe, he fell in love with the foot, and finally married the owner of both. Very little more acquaintance with each other have the majority of the Innocents who go abroad into the unknown country of Matrimony to seek their fortunes or misfortunes.
And then the temper and manner of people when making love are so different from what these become
So HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
afterwards ! " One would think the whole endeavour of both parties during the time of courtship is to hinder themselves from being known — to disguise their natural temper and real desires in hypocritical imitation, studied compliance, and continued affectation. From the time that their love is avowed, neither sees the other but in a mask ; and the cheat is often managed on both sides with so much art, and discovered afterwards with so much abruptness, that each has reason to suspect that some transformation has happened on the wedding- night, and that by a strange imposture, as in the case of Jacob, one has been courted and another married."
Our conventional state of society curtails the limits of choice in matrimony and hinders the natural law of the marriage of the fittest. We knew a young gentleman living in a London suburb who bore an excellent character, had sufficient income, and was in every respect marriageable. He wished to try the experiment of two against the world, but — as he told the clergyman of his parish — he was in the city all day, and never had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with a young lady whom he could ask to be his wife.
We have heard of the stiff Englishman who would not attempt to save a fellow-creature from 'drowning because he had never been introduced to him. In the same way unmarried ladies are allowed to remain in the Slough of Despond because the valiant young gentlemen who would rescue them, though they may be almost, are not altogether in their social set
Every one knows Plato's theory about marriage. He taught that men and women were hemispheres, so to speak, of an original sphere ; that ill-assorted marriages were the result of the wrong hemispheres getting together ; that, if the true halves met, the man became complete, and the consequence was the " happy-ever-after " of childhood's stories. There is much truth in this doctrine, that for every man there is one woman somewhere in thy world, and for every woman one man. They seldom
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 51
meet in time. If they did, what would become of the sensational novelists ?
But are there not in reality too many artificial obstacles to happy marriages? Why do the right men and women so seldom meet ? Because mammon, ambition, envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness step between and keep apart those whom God would join together.
It is true that newly-married people when going through the process of being disillusioned are liable to conclude much too quickly that they have got bad matrimonial bargains. In a letter which Mrs. Thrale, the friend of Dr. Johnson, wrote to a young gentleman on his marriage, she says : " Vvrhen your present violence of passion subsides, and a more cool and tranquil affec- tion takes its place, be not hasty to censure yourself as indifferent, or to lament yourself as unhappy. You have lost that only which it was impossible to retain ; and it were graceless amid the pleasures of a prosperous summer to regret the blossoms of a transient spring. Neither unwarily condemn your bride's insipidity, till you have reflected that no object however sublime, no sounds however charming, can continue to transport us with delight, when they no longer strike us with novelty."
Satiety follows quickly upon the heels of possession, A little boy of four years of age told me the other day that he wished to die. "Why?" "Oh, just for a change ! " There are children of a larger growth who require continual change and variety to keep them interested.
We expect too much from life in general, and from married life in particular. When castle-building before marriage we imagine a condition never experienced on this side of heaven ; and when real life comes with its troubles and cares, the tower of romance falls with a crash, leaving us in the mud-hut of everyday reality. Better to enter the marriage state in the frame of mind of that company of American settlers, who, in naming
52 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
their new town, called it Dictionary, " because," as they said, "that's the only place where peace, prosperity, and happiness are always to be found."
It would be contrary to the nature of constitutional grumblers to be satisfied with their matrimonial bargains, no matter how much too good for them they may be. They don't want to be satisfied in this or in any other respect, for, as the Irishman said, they are never happy unless they are miserable. They may have drawn a prize in the matrimonial lottery, but they grumble if it be not the highest prize. They are cursed with dis- positions like that of the Jew, who, very early one morning, picked up a roll of bank-notes on Newmarket Heath, which had been dropped by some inebriated betting-man the night before. "What have you got there ? " exclaimed a fellow Israelite. " Lucky as usual!" "Lucky you call it?" grumbled the man in reply, rapidly turning over the notes. " Lucky is it ! all fivers — not a tenner among them ! "
Even a perfect matrimonial bargain would not please some people. They are as prone to grumble as the poof woman who, being asked if she were satisfied when a pure water supply had been introduced into Edinburgh, said: "Aye, not so well as I might; it's not like the water we had before— it neither smells nor tastes."
There is a story told of a rustic swain who, when asked whether he would take his partner to be his wedded wife, replied, with shameful indecision, " Yes, I'm willin'; but I'd a much sight rather have her - sister." The sort of people who are represented by this vacillating bridegroom are no sooner married than they begin to cast fond, lingering looks behind upon the state of single blessedness they have abandoned, or else upon some lost ideal which they prefer to the living, breathing reality of which they have become possessed. They don't know, and never did know, their own minds.
Let us suppose, however, that a bad matrimonial bargain has been obtained- not in imagination, but in
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 53
sad earnest — How is the best to be made of it? We must do as Old Mother Hubbard did when she found the cupboard empty — " accept the inevitable with calm steadfastness." It may even be politic to dissemble a little, and pretend we rather enjoy it than otherwise. Above all, do not appeal to the girl's friends for comfort or consolation. They will only laugh at you. Take warning from the unfortunate young man who, every time he met the father of his wife, complained to him of the bad temper and disposition of his daughter. At last, upon one occasion, the old gentleman, becoming weary of the grumbling of his son-in-law, exclaimed : " You are right, sir; she is an impertinent jade; and if I hear any more complaints of her, I will disinherit her."
A writer in Chambers }s Journal gives some instances of matrimonial tribulation that were brought to light in the last census returns. Several husbands returned their wives as the heads of the families; and one described himself as an idiot for having married his literal better- half. "Married, and I'm heartily sorry for it," was returned in two cases; and in quite a number of instances "Temper" was entered under the head of infirmities opposite the name of the wife.
Confessions of this sort, besides being, as we have already hinted, somewhat indiscreet, are often also supererogatory ; for conjugal dissension, like murder, will out ; and that sometimes in the most provoking and untimely manner. It would be much better to call in the assistance of proper pride than to whine in this cowardly fashion. "We mortals," says George Eliot, " men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time ; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say * Oh, nothing ! ' Pride helps us ; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts — not to hurt others.'1 "To feel the chains, but take especial care the world shall not hear
54 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
them clank. Tis a prudence that often passes for happiness. It is one of the decencies of matrimony."
"Biddy," said Dean Swift one day to his cook, " this leg of mutton is overdone; take it down and do it less." "Plaze, your Riverence," replied Biddy, "the thing is impossible." "Well, then," rejoined her master, "let this be a lesson to you, that if you must commit mistakes they, at all events, shall not be of such gravity as to preclude correction." Well would it be if people never made mistakes that preclude correction in reference to more important matters I Yet, for all this, it is a good thing that we have no " fatal facility " of divorce in this country, and that a marriage once made is generally regarded as a world- without-end bargain.
A story has been told of a graceless scamp who gained access to the Clarendon printing-office in Oxford, when a new edition of the Prayer-book was ready for the press. In that part of the " form" already set up which contained the marriage service, he substituted the letter k for the letter v in the word live; and thus the vow "to love, honour, comfort, etc., so long as ye both shall live," was made to read "so long as ye both shall like ! " The change was not discovered until the whole of the edition was printed off. If the sheets are still preserved, it would be a good speculation to send them to some of the States in America, where people are " exceedingly divorced." May they long remain useless in Great Britain ! For nothing is more dangerous than to unite two persons so closely in ail their interests and concerns as man and wife, without rendering the union entire and total.
In that very interesting Bible story of Nabal and Abigail, a noble woman is seen making the best of an extremely bad matrimonial bargain. If her marriage with Nabal, who was a churlish, iil-ternpered, drunken fool, was one of the worst possible, does not her conduct teach the lesson that something may be done to mitigate the miseries of even the most frightful state of marriage P
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 55
Who shall say how many heroines unknown to fame there are who imitate her ? Their husbands are weak- willed, foolish, idle, extravagant, dissipated, and gener- ally ne'er-do-weel ; but instead of helplessly sitting down to regret their marriage-day, they take the manage- ment of everything into their own hands, and make the best of the inevitable by patient endurance in well-doing. It is sometimes said that " any husband is better than none." Perhaps so; in the sense of his being a sort of domestic Attila, a "scourge of God" to "whip the offending Adam " out of a woman and turn her into an angel, as the wives of some bad husbands seem to become.
" I will do anything," says Portia, in the Merchant of Venice, " ere I will be married to a sponge;" and in answer to the question — " How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony's nephew ? " she answers : "Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober; and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk : when he is '"best he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst he is little better than a beast: an the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him."
When a poor girl has not had Portia's discernment to discover such faults before, marriage, what can she do ? She can do her best.
" What knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband ? " Endeavouring to do this, you will not only have the answer of a good conscience, but will have taken the -est precaution against falling yourself, so that it never can be truly said of you —
As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a
clown, And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag
thee down.
It has been said that to have loved and lost—- either by that total disenchantment which leaves compassion *ts
56 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
the sole substitute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day all that constitutes the diviner part of love, namely, reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness — this lot is probably the hardest any woman can have to bear.
What is good for a bootless bane ? — And she made answer, Endless sorrow.
This answer should never have been made, for none but the guilty can be long and completely miserable. The effect and duration of sorrow greatly depends upon ourselves. " If thou hast a bundle of thorns in thy lot, at least thou need'st not insist on sitting down on them." Nor must we forget that there is a " wondrous alchemy in time and the power of God " to transmute our sorrows, as well as our faults and errors, into golden blessings.
It is an old maxim that if one will not, two cannot quarrel. If one of the heads of the house has a bad temper, there is all the more reason for the other to be cool and collected, and capable of keeping domestic peace. Think of Socrates, who, when his wife Xanthippe concluded a fit of scolding by throwing at him a bucket of water, quietly remarked, "After the thunder comes the rain." And when she struck him, to some friends who would have had him strike her again, he replied, that he would not make them sport, nor that they should stand by and say, " Eia Socrates^ cia Xanthippe!" as boys do when dogs fight, animate them more by clapping hands.
If we would learn how to make the worst instead of the best of a matrimonial bargain, Adam, the first husband, will teach us. He allowed himself to be tempted by Eve, and then like a true coward tried to put all the blame upon her. This little bit of history repeats itself every day. "In the state of innocenc;
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 57
Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaif do in the days of villainy ? "
There is another way in which people make the worst instead of the best of their bad matrimonial bargains. " Faults are thick where love is thin," and love having become thin they exaggerate the badness of their bargains. A man, having one well-formed and one crooked leg, was wont to test the disposition of his friends, by observing which leg they looked at first or most. Surely the last people we should draw with their worst leg foremost are our life partners. The best of men are only men at the best. They are, as Sterne said, "a strange compound of contradictory qualities; and were the accidental oversights and folly of the wisest man — the failings and imperfections of a religious man — the hasty acts and passionate words of a meek man—- were they to rise up in judgment against them, and an ill-natured judge to be suffered to mark in this manner what had been done amiss, what character so unexceptionable as to be able to stand before him ? " Ought husbands and wives to be ill-natured judges of what is amiss ?
" Let a man," says Seneca, " consider his own vices, reflect upon his own follies, and he will see that he has the greatest reason to be angry with himself." The best advice to give husband and wife is to ask them to resolve in the words of Shakespeare, " I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults." Why beh oldest thou the mote that is in the eye of thy matrimonial bargain, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ?
When you find yourself complaining of your matrimonial bargain, think sometimes whether you deserve a better one. What right and title has thy greedy soul to domestic happiness or to any other kind of happiness ? 4< Fancy," says Carlyle, " thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot." We may imagine that we
$8 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
deserve a perfect matrimonial bargain, but a less partial observer like Lord Braxfield might make a correction in our estimate. This Scotch judge once said to an eloquent culprit at the bar, ' ' YeVe a verra clever chiel, mon, but I'm thinkin' ye wad be nane the waur o* a hangin'." Equally instructive is the story of a magistrate, who, when a thief remonstrated, " But, sir, I must live," replied, "I don't recognise the necessity,'1 It is only when we cease to believe that we must have supreme domestic and other kinds of felicity, that we are able with a contented mind to bear our share of the ** weary weight of all this unintelligible world."
In reference to marriage and to everything else in life we should sometimes reflect how much worse off we might be instead of how much better. Perhaps you are like the man who said, " I must put up with it," when he had only turkey and plum-pudding for dinner. If, as it has often been said, all men brought their grievances of mind, body, and estate — their lunacies, epilepsies, cancers, bereavement, beggary, imprisonment — and laid them on a heap to be equaDy divided, would you share alike and take your portion, or be as you are ? Without question you would be as you are. And perhaps if all matrimonial bargains were to be again distributed, it would be better for you to keep what you have than to run the chance of getting worse. A man who grumbled at the badness of his shoes felt ashamed on meeting with one who had no feet. " Consider the pains which martyrs have endured, and think how even now many people are bearing afflictions beyond all measure greater than yours, and say, * Of a truth my trouble is comfort, my torments are but roses as compared to those whose life is a continual death, without solace, or aid, or consolation, borne down with a weight of grief tenfold greater than mine,1 "
Oft in life's *tili*&t *hado reclining, In cUsolatiozi unrepining,
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED, 59
Without a hope on earth to find A mirror in an answering mind, Meek souls there are, who little dream, Their daily strife an angel's theme, Or that the rod they take so calm Shall prove in Heaven a martyr's palm.
One of these " meek souls " is reported to have said to a friend, "You know not the joy of an accepted sorrow." And of every disappointment, we may truly say that people know not how well it may be borne until they have tried to bear it. This, which is true of disappointment in general, is no less true of the disappointments of a married pair. Those who have not found in marriage all that they fondly, and perhaps over sanguinely, anticipated, may, after some time, become to a certain extent happy though married, if they resolve to do their best under the circumstances.
60 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. CHAPTER VII.
AfARRIAGE CONSIDERED AS A DISCIPLINE OF CHARACTER.
Certainly wife and children are a kind of Discipline of Humanity. — BACON.
I well remember the bright assenting laugh which she (Mrs. Carlyle) once responded to some words of mine, when the propriety was being discussed of relaxing the marriage laws. I had said that the true way to look at marriage was as a discipline of character. — FROUDE.
"Dm you ever see anything so absurd as a horse sprawling like that?*' This was the hasty exclamation of a connoisseur on taking up a small cabinet picture. "Excuse me," replied the owner, "you hold it the wrong way : it is a horse galloping." So much depends upon the way we look at things. In the preceding chapter we spoke of making the best of bad matrimonial bargains. Perhaps it would help some people to do this if they looked at marriage from a different point of view — if they considered it as a discipline of character rather than as a short cut to the highest heaven of happiness. Certainly this is a practical point of view, and it may be that those who marry in this spirit are more likely to use their matrimony rightly than those who start with happiness as their only goal. That people get happiness by being willing to pass it by and do without it rather than by directly pursuing it, is as true of domestic felicity as of other kinds.
"Ven you're a married man, Samivel," says Mr. Weller to his son Sam, " you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now; but vether it's worth while going through so much to learn so little, as the charity-boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o' taste: I rayther think it isn't." 'Strange that a philosopher of the senior Mr. Weller's
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 61
profundity should under-estimate in this way the value of matrimony as a teacher. We have it on the authority of a widower who was thrice married, that his first wife cured his romance, the second taught him humility, and the third made him a philosopher. Another veteran believes that five or six years of married life will often reduce a naturally irascible man to so angelic a condition that it would hardly be safe to trust him with a pair of wings.
Webster asks —
What do you think of marriage ? I think, as those do who deny purgatory, It locally contains either heaven or hell, There is no third place in it.
Is this true? We think not, for we know many married people who live in a third place, the existence of which is here denied. They are neither intensely happy nor intensely miserable ; but they lose many faults, and are greatly developed in character by passing through a purgatorial existence. Nor is this an argument against matrimony, except to those who deny that " it is better to be seven times in the furnace than to come out unpurified."
Sweet are the uses of this and every other adversity when these words of Sir Arthur Helps are applicable to its victims or rather victors : " That man is very strong and powerful who has no more hopes for himself, who looks not to be loved any more, to be admired any more, to have any more honour or dignity, and who cares not for gratitude ; but whose sole thought is for others, and who only lives on for them."
The young husband may imagine that he only takes a wife to add to his own felicity ; taking no account of the possibility of meeting a disposition and temper which may, without caution, mar and blight his own. Women are not angels, although in their ministrations they make a near approach to them. Women,, no more
62 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
than men, are free from human infirmities; the newly- married man must therefore calculate upon the necessity of amendment in his wife as well as of that necessity in himself. The process, however, as well as the result of the process, will yield a rich reward. At a minister's festival meeting "Our Wives" was one of the toasts. One of the brethren, whose wife had a temper of her own, on being sportively asked if he would drink it, exclaimed, " Aye, heartily ! Mine brings me to my knees in prayer a dizzen times a day, an1 nane o* you can say the same o* yours."
If even bad matrimonial bargains have so much influence in disciplining character, how much more may be learned from a happy marriage ! Without it a man or woman is " Scarce half made up.** The enjoyments of celibacy, whatever they may be, are narrow in their range, and belong to only a portion of our nature; and whatever the excellences of the bachelor's character, he can never attain to a perfect manhood so long as such a large and important part of his nature as the affections for the gratification of which marriage provides, is unexercised and unde- veloped. There are in his nature latent capabilities, both of enjoyment and affection, which find no ex- pression. He is lacking in moral symmetry. The motives from which he keeps himself free from marriage responsibilities may be worthy of the highest respect, but this does not hinder his character from being less disciplined than it might have been.
For indeed I- know
Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teaeh high thoughts and amiable words, And love of truth, and all that makes a man.
On both sides marriage brings into play some of the purest and loftiest feelings of which our nature is
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 63
capable. The feeling of identity of interest implied in the marriage relation —the mutual confidence which is the natural result — the tender, chivalrous regard of the husband for his wife as one who has given herself to him — the devotion and respect of the wife for the husband as one to whom she has given herself — their mutual love attracted first by the qualities seen or imagined by each in the other, and afterwards strengthened by the consciousness of being that object's best beloved — these feelings exert a purifying, refining, elevating influence, and are more akin to the religious than any other feelings. Love, like all things here, is education. It renders us wise by expanding the soul and stimulating the mental powers.
Yes, love indeed is light from heaven :
A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared, by Allah given,
To lift from earth our low desire. Devotion wafts the mind above, But heaven itself descends in love ; A feeling from the Godhead caught, To wean from self each sordid thought ; A ray of Him who formed the whole ; A glory circling round the soul J
It has been well said, u The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second, something to reverence." Both these conditions meet in a well- chosen alliance.
Married people may so abuse matrimony as to make it a very school for scandal ; but it may and ought to be what Sir Thomas More's home was said to be, "a school and exercise of the Christian religion." "No wrangling, no angry word, was heard in it ; no one was idle ; every one did his duty with alacrity and not with- out a temperate cheerfulness." This atmosphere of love and duty which pervaded his home must have been owing in a great measure to the household goodness of
64 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
Sir Thomas himself. For though his first wife was all that he could have desired, his second was ill-tempered and little capable of appreciating the lofty principles that actuated her husband. "I have lived — I have laboured — I have loved. I have lived in them I loved, laboured for them I loved, loved them for whom I laboured." Well might Sir Thomas add after this reflection, "My labour hath not been in vain ; " for to say nothing of its effect upon others, how it must have disciplined his own character !
"There is nothing," you say, "in the drudgery of domestic life to soften." No; but, as Robertson of Brighton says, " a great deal to strengthen with the sense of duty done, self-control, and power. Besides you cannot calculate how much corroding rust is kept off, how much of disconsolate, dull despondency is hindered. Daily use is not the jeweller's mercurial polish, but it will keep your little silver pencil from tarnishing."
"Family life," says Sainte-Beuve, "may be full of thorns and cares ; but they are fruitful : all others are dry thorns." And again : " If a man's home at a certain period of life does not contain children, it will probably be found filled with follies or with vices."
Even if it were a misfortune to be married, which we emphatically deny, has not the old Roman moralist taught us that " to escape misfortune is to want instruc- tion, and that to live at ease is to live in ignorance " ? Misfortune to be married I Rather not.
Life with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear . . .
Is just our chance o* the prize of the learning love —
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 65 CHAPTER VIII.
BEING MARRIED.
If ever one is to pray — if ever one is to feel grave and anxious — if ever one is to shrink from vain show and vain babble, surely it is just on the occasion of two human beings binding themselves to one another, for better and for worse till death part them. — Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle.
AN elderly unmarried lady of Scotland, after reading aloud to her two sisters, also unmarried, the births, marriages, and deaths in the ladies' corner of a news- paper, thus moralised: "Weel, weel, these are solemn events — death and marriage; but ye ken they're what we must all come to." " Eh, Miss Jeanny, but ye have been lang spared 1 " was the reply of the youngest sister. Those who in our thoughts were represented as being only in prospect of marriage are spared no longer. They have now come to what they had to come to — a day "so full of gladness, and so full of pain" — a day only second in importance to the day of birth ; in a word, to their wedding day.
Are [they] sad or merry ?
Like to the time o* the year between the extremes Of hot and cold : [they are] nor sad nor merry.
And yet few on such a day are as collected as the late Duke of Sutherland is said to have been. Just two hours before the time fixed for his marriage with one of the most beautiful women in England, a friend came upon him in St. James's Park, leaning carelessly over the railing at the edge of the water, throwing crumbs to the waterfowl. " What ! you here to-day 1 I thought you were going to be married this morning ? " " Yes," replied the Duke, without moving an inch or stopping C his crumb-throwing, " I believe I am."
66 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
To men of a shyer and more nervous temperament, to be married without chloroform is a very painful operation. They find it difficult to screw their courage to the marrying place. On one occasion a bridegroom so far forgot what was due to himself and his bride as to render himself unfit to take the vows through too frequent recourse on the wedding morn to the cup that cheers — and inebriates. The minister was obliged to refuse to proceed with the marriage, A few days later, the same thing occurred with the same couple ; where- upon the minister gravely remonstrated with the bride, and said they must not again present themselves with the bridegroom in such a state. "But, sir, he — he wt'nna come when he's sober" was the candid rejoinder. It is possible that this bridegroom, whose courage was so very Dutch, might have been deterred by the irnpend- ing fuss and publicity of a marriage ceremony, rather than by any fear of or want of affection for her who was to become his wife. Even in the best assorted marriages there is always more or less anxiety felt upon the wedding-day.
The possibility of a hitch arising from a sadden change of inclination on the part of the principals is ludicrously illustrated by the case of two couples who on one occasion presented themselves at the Mayoralty, in a suburb of Paris, to carry out the civil portion of their marriage contract. During the ceremony one of the bridegrooms saw, or fancied he saw, his partner making " sheep's-eyes " at the bridegroom opposite. Being of a jealous temperament, he laid his hand roughly on her arm, and said sharply, " Mademoiselle, which of the two brides are you ? You are mine, I believe : then oblige me by confining your glances to me." The bride was a young woman of spirit, and resenting the tone in which the reprimand was made, retorted, " Ah, Monsieur, if you are jealous already, I am likely to lead a pleasant life with you ! " The jealous bridegroom made an angry reply ; and then the
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 67
other bridegroom must needs put his oar in. This led to a general dispute, which the Mayor in vain endeavoured to quell. The bridegrooms stormed at each other ; and the brides, between their hysterical sobs, mutually accused each other of perfidy. At length the Mayor, as a last resource, adjourned the ceremony for half an hour, to admit of an amicable understanding being arrived at, both brides having refused to proceed with the celebration of the nuptials. When, at the expiration of the half-hour, the parties were summoned to reappear, they did so, to the amazement of the bewildered Mayor, in an altogether different order from that in which they had originally entered. The bridegrooms had literally effected an exchange of brides — the jealous bridegroom taking the jealous bride ; and the other, the lady whose fickle glances had led to the rupture. All four adhering to the new arrangement, the Mayor, it is recorded, had no alternative but to proceed with the ceremony.
The ruling passion is not more strongly felt in death than in marriage. Dr. Johnson displayed the sturdiness of his character as he journeyed with the lady of his choice from Birmingham to Derby, at which last place they were to be married. Their ride thither, which we give in the bridegroom's own words, is an amusing bit of literary history. " Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me : and when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it ; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed her to be in tears."
On the wedding-day of the celebrated M. Pasteur, who
68 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
has made such extraordinary discoveries about germs, the hour appointed for the ceremony had arrived, but the bridegroom was not there. Some friends rushed off to the laboratory and found him very busy with his apron on. He was excessively cross at being disturbed, and declared that marriage might wait, but his experi- ments could not do so.
He would indeed be a busy man who could not make time for a marriage ceremony as brief as that which was employed in the celebration of a marriage in Iowa, United States. The bride and bridegroom were told to join their hands, and then asked, "Do you want one another?" Both replied, "Yes." "Well, then, have one another ; " and the couple were man and wife. Most people, however, desire a more reverent solemnisa- tion of marriage, which may be viewed in two aspects w-ras a natural institution, and a religious ordinance. In the Old Testament we see it as a natural institution ; in the New, it is brought before us in a religious light. It is there likened to the union of Christ and the Church. The union of Christ and the Church is not illustrated by marriage, but marriage by this spiritual union ; that is, the natural is based upon the spiritual. And this is what is wanted ; it gives marriage a religious significa- tion, and it thus becomes a kind of semi-sacrament. The illustration teaches that in order to be happy though married the principle of sacrifice must rule the conduct of the married. As no love between man and wife can be true which does not issue in a sacrifice of each for the other, so Christ gave Himself for His Church and the Church sacrifices itself to His service. The only true love is self-devotion, and the every-day affairs of married life must fail without this principle of self-sacrifice or the cross of Christ.
"Would to God that His dear Son were bidden to all weddings as to that of Cana ! Truly then the wine of consolation and blessing would never be lacking. He who desires that the young of his flock should be like
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Jacob's, fair and ring-straked, must set fair objects before their eyes; and he who would find a blessing in his marriage, must ponder the holiness and dignity of this mystery, instead of which too often weddings become a season of mere feasting and disorder."
A new home is being formed in reference to which the bride and groom should think, "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." The parish church is called "God's House "; but if all the parishioners rightly used their matrimony, every house in the parish might be called the same. Home is the place of the highest joys ; religion should sanctify it. Home is the sphere of the deepest sorrows; the highest consolation of religion should assuage its griefs. Home is the place of the greatest intimacy of heart with heart ; religion should sweeten it with the joy of confidence. Home discovers all faults; religion should bless it with the abundance of charity. Home is the place for impressions, for instruction and culture ; there should religion open her treasures of wisdom and pronounce her heavenly benediction.
An old minister, previous to the meeting of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, used to pray that the assembly might be so guided as " no to do ony harm" We have often thought that such a prayer as this would be an appropriate commencement for the marriage service. Considering the issues that are involved in marriage — the misery unto the third and fourth generation that may result from it — those who join together man and woman in matrimony ought to I pray that in doing so they may do no harm. Certainly the opening exhortation of the Church of England marriage service is sufficiently serious. It begins by proclaiming the sacredness of marriage as a Divine institution ; hallowed as a type of the mystical union between Christ and His Church; honoured (even in its festive aspect) by Our Lord's presence and first miracle
70 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
at Cana of Galilee ; declared to be " honourable among all men, and therefore not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God ; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained." These are explained in words plain-spoken almost to coarseness before allusion is made to the higher moral relation of** mutual society, help, and comfort " which marriage creates.
Then follows "the betrothal" in which the man "plights his troth" (pledges his truth), taking the initiative, while the woman gives hers in return :
The " wilt thou," answered, and again The " wilt thou," asked, till out of twain Her sweet " I will " has made ye one.
The "joining of hands" is from time immemorial the pledge of covenant — we ** shake hands over a bargain " — and is here an essential part of the marriage ceremony.
The use of the ring is described in the prayer that follows as the token of the marriage covenant — from the man the token of his confiding to his wife all authority over what is his, and for the woman the badge of belonging to his house. The old service has a quaint rubric declaring it put on the fourth finger of the left hand, because thence " there is a vein leading direct to the heart" The Prayer Book of Edward VI. directs that "the man shall give unto the woman a ring, and other tokens of spousage, as gold or silver, laying the same upon the book." This is clearly the ancient bride price. Wheatly's Book of Common Prayer says, "This lets us into the design of the ring, and intimates it to be the remains of an ancient custom whereby it was usual for the man to purchase the woman." The words to be spoken by the man are taken from the old service, still using the ancient
HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. 71
word "worship" (worth — ship) for service and honour. They declare the dedication both of person and substance to the marriage bond.
The Blessing is one of singular beauty and solemnity It not only invokes God's favour to "bless, preserve, and keep" the newly-made husband and wife in this world, but looks beyond it to the life hereafter, for which nothing can so well prepare them as a well-spent wedded life here.
It is said that among the natives of India the cost to a father of marrying his daughter is about equal to having his house burnt down. Although brides are not so expensive in this country, much money is wasted on the wedding and preliminaries which would be very useful to the young people a year or two afterwards.
We would not advise that there should be no wedding- breakfast and that the bride should have no trousseau; but we do think that these accessories should be in accordance with the family exchequer. Again, wedding presents are often the very articles that the young couple need least, and are not unfrequently found to be duplicates of the gifts of other persons. But we cannot linger over the wedding festivities.
Adieu, young friends ! and may joy crown you, love bless you. God speed your career !
Some natural tears they dropped, but wip'd them soon : The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow. Through Eden took their solitary way.
72 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
CHAPTER IX.
HONEYMOONING.
The importance of the honeymoon, which had been so much vaunted to him by his father, had not held good. — The Married Life of Albert Dilrer,
THE " honeymoon" is defined by Johnson to be "the first month after marriage, when there is nothing but tenderness and pleasure." And certainly it ought to be the happiest month in our lives ; but it may, like every other good thing, be spoiled by mismanagement. When this is the case, we take our honeymoon like other pleasures — sadly. Instead of happy reminiscences, nothing is left of it except its jars.
You take, says the philosophical observer, a man and a woman, who in nine cases out of ten know very little about each other (though they generally fancy they do), you cut off the woman from all her female friends, you deprive the man of his ordinary business and ordinary pleasures, and you condemn this unhappy pair to spend a month of enforced seclusion in each other's society. If they marry in the summer and start on a tour, the man is oppressed with a plethora of sight-seeing, while the lady, as often as not, becomes seriously ill from fatigue and excitement.
A newly-married man took his bride on a tour to Switzerland for the honeymoon, and when there induced her to attempt with him the ascent of one of the high peaks. The lady, who at home had never ascended a hill higher than a church, was much alarmed, and had to be carried by the guides with her eyes blind- folded, so as not to witness the horrors of the passage. The bridegroom walked close to her, expostulating respecting her fear. He spoke in honeymoon whispers ; but th* rarefaction of the air was such that every word
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was audible. " You told me, Leonora, that you always felt happy — no matter where you were — so long as you were in my company. Then why are you not happy now?" "Yes, Charles, I did," replied she, sobbing hysterically; "but I never meant above the snow-line." It is at such times as these that awkward angles of temper make themselves manifest, which, under a more sensible system, might have been concealed for years, perhaps for ever.
Boswell called upon Dr. Johnson on the morning of the day on which he was to leave for Scotland — for matrimonial purposes. The prospect of connubial felicity had made the expectant husband voluble; he therefore took courage to recite to the sage a little love- song which he had himself composed and which Dibdin was to set to music :
A MATRIMONIAL THOUGHT.
In the blythe days of honeymoon, With Kate's allurements smitten
I loved her late, I loved her soon, And called her dearest kitten.
But now my kitten's grown a cat,
And cross like other wives, Oh ! by my soul, my honest Mat,
I fear she has nine lives.
Johnson: "It is very well, sir, but you should not swear." Whereupon the obnoxious " Oh ! by my soul," was changed on the instant to " Alas ! alas ! "
If the kitten should develop into a cat even before the " blythe days of honeymoon " are ended, it is no wonder, considering the way some young couples spend the first month of married life, rushing from one continental city to another, and visiting all the churches and picture-galleries, however scorching may be the weather or however great may be their secret aversion
74 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
to art and antiquity. The lady gives way to fatigue, and is seized with a violent headache. For a while the young husband thinks that it is rather nice to support his Kate's head, but when she answers his sympathetic inquiries sharply and petulantly, he in turn becomes less aimable, dazzling, enchanting, and, in a word, all that as *.fianc6 he had been.
Winter honeymooning is even more trying to the temper, for then short days and unfavourable weather compel the young couple to stay in one place. Imagine the delights of a month spent in lodgings at the seaside, with nothing to do except to get photographed, which is a favourite pastime of the newly-married. The bride may be indifferent to the rain and sleet beating against the windows, for she can spend the time writing to her friends long and enthusiastic descriptions of her happiness; but what can the unlucky bridegroom do? He subscribes to the circulating library, reads a series of novels aloud to his wife, and illustrates every amatory passage with a kiss. But the " dear old boy " (as the bride calls him) tires of this sort of thing after a week, and how can he then amuse himself? He stares out of windows, he watches the arrival of the milkman and the butcher with the liveliest interest; he envies the coastguardsman, who is perpetually on the lookout for invisible smugglers through a portentously long telescope, Cases have been known where the bridegroom — a City man — being driven to desperation, has privately ordered the office journal and ledger to be sent down by luggage train, and has devoted his even- ings to checking the additions in those interesting volumes.
When Hodge and his sweetheart crown their pastoral loves in the quiet old country church, they take a pleasant dr.ve or a walk in their finery, and settle down at once to connubial comfort in the cot beside the wood. Why do their richer neighbours deny themselves this happiness and invent special troubles? Why, during
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the early weeks of married life, do they lay up sad memories of provoking mistakes, of trunks which will not pack, of trains which will not wait, of tiresome sight- seeing, of broiling sun, of headache, of " the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever " of honeymooning abroad ? Many a bridegroom but just returned from a " delightful tour on the Continent " will be able to sympathise in the remark of the country farmer to a companion in the train, as he went to town to buy hay. " Yes, it's been a bad winter for some folk. Old Smith's dead, and so is Jones, and my wife died yesterday. And how be the hay, master ? "
We do not want excitement during the honeymoon, for are we not in love (if we are not we ought to be ashamed of ourselves), and is not love all-sufficient? Last week we only saw the object of our affections by fits and starts as it were; now we have her or him all to ourselves.
Who hath not felt that breath in the air,
A perfume and freshness strange and rare,
A warmth in the light, and a bliss everywhere,
When young hearts yearn together ? All sweets below, and all sunny above, Oh ! there's nothing in life like making love,
Save making hay in fine weather.
Let cynics say what they will, the honeymoon, when not greatly mismanaged, is a halcyon period. It is a delightful lull between two distinct states of existence, and the married man is not to be envied who can recall no pleasant reminiscences of it. What profane outsiders consider very dull has a charm of its own to honeymoon lovers who " illumine life with dreaming," and who see — *
Golden visions wave and hover, Golden vapours, waters streaming, Landscapes moving, changing, gleaming;
76 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
Still, we cannot but think that if a wedding tour must be taken, it should be short, quiet, free-and- easy, and inexpensive. At some future time, when the young people are less agitated and have learned to understand each other better, the time and money saved will be available for a more extended holiday. During the honeymoon there should be "marches hymeneal in the land of the ideal" rather than globe-trotting; "thoughts moved o'er fields Elysian" rather than over the perplexing pages of "Bradshaw's General Railway and Steam Navigation Guide."
In reference to the honeymoon, as to other matters, people's opinions differ according to their temperaments and circumstances. So we shall conclude this chapter by quoting two nearly opposite opinions, and ask our readers to decide for themselves.
In the " Memoir of Daniel Macmillan " his opinion is thus stated: " That going out for the honeymoon is a most wise and useful invention; it enables you to be so constantly together, and to obtain a deeper knowledge of each other ; and it also helps one to see and feel the preciousness of such intimacy as nothing else could. Intercourse in the presence of others never leads below the surface, and it is in the very depths of our being that true calm, deep and true peace and love live. Nothing so well prepares for the serious duties of after-life/'
"As to long honeymoons," said a Bishop of Rochester, " most sensible people have come utterly to disbelieve in them. They are a forced homage to utterly false ideas; they are a waste of money at a mement when every shilling is wanted for much more pressing objects; they are a loss of time, which soon comes to be dreary and weary. Most of all, they are a risk for love, which ought not so soon to be so unpleasantly tested by the inevitable petulances of a secret ennui, Six days by all means, and then, oh I
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happy friends, go straight home. . . . Whenever you come back, six weeks hence or one, you will have just as much to stand the fire of a little hard staring which won't hurt you, and of bright pleasantness which need not vex you; and the sooner you are at home, the sooner you will find out what married happiness means."
78 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. CHAPTER X.
MARRIAGE VOWS.
Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. — Ecclesiastes v. 5.
THE honeymoon is over, and our young couple have exchanged their chrysalis condition for the pleasures and duties of ordinary married life. Let them begin by forming the highest ideal of marriage. Now, and on every anniversary of their wedding-day, they should seriously reflect upon those vows which are too often taken, either in entire ignorance of their meaning and import, or thoughtlessly, as though they were mere incidents of the marriage ceremony.
A Hampshire incumbent recently reported some of the blunders he had heard made in the marriage service, by that class of persons who have to pick up the words as best they can from hearing them repeated by others. He said that in his own parish it was quite the fashion for the man, when giving the ring, to say to the woman, "With my body I thee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou.*' He said the women were generally better up in this part of the service than the men. One day, however, a bride startled him by promising, in what she supposed to be language of the Prayer-book, to take her husband "to 'ave and to 'old from this day fortn't, for betterer horse, for richerer power, in siggerness health, to love cherries, and to bay." We have heard of an ignorant bridegroom who, confusing the baptismal and marriage services, replied, when asked if he consented to take the bride for his wife, * I renounce them all ! " It is to be hoped that the times of such ignorance are either passed or passing ; still, a little instruction in reference to marriage vows might be given with advantage in some churches.
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In one of his letters Byron tells a story of a learned Jew, who was remarkable, in the brilliant circles to which his learning gained him admittance, for his habit of asking questions continuously and fearlessly, in order to get at the bottom of any matter in discussion. To a person who was complaining of the Prince Regent's bad treatment of his old boon companions, this habitual interrogator cried across a dinner-table, " And why does the prince act so ? " " Because he was told so-and- so by Lord •• •• ; who ought to be ashamed of himself ! " was the answer. " But why, sir, has the prince cut you ? " inquired the searcher after truth. " Because I stuck to my principles — yes, sir, because I stuck to my principles ! " replied the other testily, thinking that his examination was ended. "And why did you stick to your principles t " cried the interrogator, throwing the table into a roar of laughter, the mirth being no more due to the inquisitor's persistence than, to his inability to conceive that any man would stick to his principles simply because he believed them to be right Are there not some educated as well as uneducated people who seem to be quite as incapable of conceiving that they should keep their marriage vows, simply because it is dishonourable and wicked to break them ?
A mother having become alarmed about the failing state of her daughter's health, and not being able to get much satisfaction from a consultation with the village doctor, took her to a London physician for further advice. He asked a few questions as to the girl's daily habits and mode of life, carefully stethoscoped her heart and lungs, and then gave an involuntary sigh. The mother grew pale, and waited anxiously for a verdict. "Madam," he said, "so far as I can discover, your daughter is suffering from a most serious complaint, which, for want of a better name, I shall call * dulness,' Perhaps it is in your power to cure it, I have no medicine which is a specific for this disease." Girls who suffer in this way too often prescribe (or themselves
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marriage with men whom they cannot love, honour, and obey. This is as bad as dram-drinking or gambling ; but what else can the poor things do ? They have not been trained like their brothers to useful work, and have always been told that woman's first, best occupation is — to be a wife. To which it may be answered :
Most true ; but to make a mere business of marriage, To call it a "living," "vocation," "career,"
Is but to pervert, to degrade, and disparage A contract of all the most sacred and dear.
Nor will those vows be regarded with greater sanctity which are taken against the inclination. Better to be as candid as the girl who, forced by her parents into a disagreeable match, when the clergyman came to that part of the service where the bride is asked if she will have the bridegroom for her husband, said, with great simplicity, "Oh dear, no, sir; but you are the first person who has asked my opinion about the matter !"
Let us think now what the vows are which, at the altar of God, and in the presence of our fellow-creatures, we solemnly vow. Both the man and the woman vow to love, honour, cherish, and be faithful, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health, till death part them. Then the husband promises to comfort his wife, and the wife to serve and obey her husband.
A Scotch lady, whose daughter was recently married, was asked by an old friend whether she might con- gratulate her upon the event. " Yes, yes," she answered ; "upon the whole it is very satisfactory; it is true Jeannie hates her gudeman, but then there's always a something." The old friend might have told this Scotch lady that in making light of love she made light of that which was needful to hallow her daughter's marriage; and that even the blessing of a bishop in the most
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fashionable church does not prevent a loveless alliance from being a sacrifice of true chastity.
Contrast the indifference of this Scotch lady in refer- ence to matrimonial love, with the value set upon it in a letter which Pliny the Younger, who was a heathen, wrote concerning his wife, Calpurnia, to her aunt. It is quoted by Dr. Cook as follows : " She loves me, the surest pledge of her virtue, and adds to this a wonderful disposition to learning, which she has acquired from her affection to me. She reads my writings, studies them, and even gets them by heart. You would smile to see the concern she is in when I have a cause to plead, and the joy she shows when it is over. She finds means to have the first news brought her of the success I meet with in court. If I recite anything in public, she cannot refrain from placing herself privately in some corner to hear. Sometimes she accompanies my verses with the lute, without any master except love — the best of in- structors. From these instances I take the most certain omens of our perpetual and increasing happiness, since her affection is not founded on my youth or person, which must gradually decay ; but she is in love with the immortal part of me."
The second vow taken by both the man and the woman is to "honour." "Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel." " And the wife see that she reverence her husband." The weaker vessel is to be honoured, not because she is weak, but because, being weak, she acts her part so well.
And even if the wife's courage and endurance should sometimes fail, a good husband would not withhold honour from her on that account. He would remember her weaker nature, and her more delicate physical frame, her more acute nervous sensibility, her greater sensitive- ness and greater trials, the peculiar troubles to which she is subject.
In a lately published Narrative of a Journey
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through the South China Border Lands, we are told that a wife in this part of the world, when mentioned by her husband, "which happens as seldom as possible," is called " My dull thorn," " The thorn in my ribs," or "The mean one of the inner rooms.'' This is the way not to honour a wife. But the honour which a husband should give is not merely that chivalrous bearing which the strong owe to the weak, and which every woman has a right to expect from every man. In describing a husband who was in the habit of honouring his wife, Dr. Landels remarks that "one could not be in his presence without feeling it. Never a word escaped his lips which reflected directly or indirectly on her. Never an action he performed would have led to the impression that there could be any difference between them. She was the queen of his home. All about them felt that in his estimation, and by his desire, her authority was un- impeachable, and her will law. And the effect of his example was that children and friends and domestics alike hedged her about with sweet respect. A man of strong will himself, his was never known to be in collision with hers; and, without any undue yielding, the homage which he paid to his wife made their union one of the happiest it has ever been our privilege to witness."
And the wife, on her part, is to reverence and honour her husband as long as she possibly can. If possible, she should let her husband suppose that she thinks him a good husband, and it will be a strong stimulus to his being so. As long as he thinks he possesses the character, he will take some pains to deserve it; but when he has lost the name he will be very apt to abandon the reality altogether. "To treat men as if > they were better than they are is the surest way to make them better than they are." Keats tells us that he has met with women who would like to be married to a Poem, and given away by a Novel ; but wives must not cease to honour their husbands on discovering that instead of
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being poetical and romantic they are very ordinary, imperfect beings.
There are homes where poverty has never left its pinch nor sickness paid its visit ; homes where there is plenty on the board, and health in the circle, and yet where a skeleton more grim than death haunts the cup- board, and an ache harsher than consumption's tooth gnaws sharply at the heart. Why do those shoulders stoop so early ere life's noon has passed? Why is it that the sigh which follows the closing of the door after the husband has gone off to business is a sigh of relief, and that which greets his coming footstep is a sigh of dread ? What means that nervous pressing of the hand against the heart, the gulping back of the lump that rises in the throat, the forced smile, and the pressed-back tear ? If we could but speak to the husbands who haunt these homes, we would tell them that some such soliloquy as the following is ever passing like a laboured breath through the distracted minds of their wives : " Is this the Canaan, this the land of promise, this the milk and honey that were pictured to my fancy ; when the walks among the lanes, and fields, and flowers were all too short, and the whispers were so loving, and the pressure was s°> fond, and the heart-beat was so passionate ! For what have I surrendered home, youth, beauty, freedom, love — all that a woman has to give in all her wealth of confidence? Harsh tones, cold looks, stern words, short answers, sullen reserve." " What," says the cheery neighbour, "is that all?" All! What more is needed to make home dark, to poison hope, to turn life into a funeral, the marriage-robe into a shroud, and the grave into a refuge? It does not want drunkenness, blows, bruises, clenched fists, oaths, to work sacrilege in the temple of the home ; only a little ice where the fire should glow; only a cold look where the love should burn; only a sneer where there ought to be a smile. Husband ! that wife of yours is wretched because you are a liar; because you perjured yourself when you
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vowed to love and cherish. You are too great a coward to beat her brains out with a poker lest the gallows claim you ; but you are so little of a man that you poison her soul with the slow cruelty of an oath daily foresworn and brutally ignored. If the ducking- stool was a punishment of old for a scolding wife, a fiercer baptism should await the husband who has ceased to cherish his wife.
As regards the vow of fidelity we need only quote these words of the prophet Malachi : " The Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously : yet she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And did not he make one? Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth." But there are absentee husbands and wives who, though they are not guilty of breaking the seventh commandment, do by no means keep the promise of keeping only to their wives and husbands. If a man come home only when other places are shut, or when his money is all gone, or when nobody else wants him, is he not telling his wife and family, as plainly by deeds as he could possibly by words, that he takes more delight in other company than in theirs ? Charles Lamb used to feel that there was something ,of dishonesty in any pleasures which he took without his lunatic sister. A good man will feel something like this in reference to his wife and children.
But though men should love their homes, it is quite possible for them to be too much at home. This at least is the opinion of most wives. There is everywhere a disposition to pack off the men in the morning and to bid them keep out of the way till towards evening, when it is assumed they will probably have a little news of the busy world to bring home, and when baby will be sure to have said something exceptionally brilliant and precocious. The general events of the day will afford topics of conversation more interesting by far
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than if the whole household had been together *from morning till night Men about home all day are fidgety, grumpy, and interfering — altogether objectionable, in short.
As a rule it is when things are going wrong that women show to the best advantage. Every one can remember illustrations. We have one in the following story of Hawthorne, which was told to Mr. Con way by an intimate friend of the novelist. One wintry day Hawthorne received at his office notification that his services would no longer be required. With heaviness of heart he repaired to his humble home. His young wife recognises the change and stands waiting for the silence to be broken. At length he falters, " I am removed from office." Then she leaves the room ; she returns with fuel and kindles a bright fire with her own hands; next she brings pen, paper, ink, and sets them beside him. Then she touches the sad man on the shoulder, and, as he turns to the beaming face, says, "Now you can write your book." The cloud cleared away. The lost office looked like a cage from which he had escaped. The Scarlet Letter was written, and a marvellous success rewarded the author and his stout- hearted wife.
The care some wives take of their husbands in sickness is very touching. John Richard Green, the historian, whose death seemed so untimely, is an instance of this. His very life was prolonged in the most wonderful way by the care and skill with which he was tended ; and it was with and through his wife that the work was done which he could not have done alone. She consulted the authorities for him, examined into obscure points, and wrote to his dictation. In this way, when he could not work more than two hours in the day, and when often some slight change in the weather would throw him back and make work impossible for days or weeks, the book was prepared which he published under the title of The Making of England,
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The husband's vow to "comfort" was never better performed than by Cobbett. In his Advice to Young Men " he says : "I began my young marriage days in and near Philadelphia. At one of those times to which I have just alluded, in the middle ot the burning hot month of July, I was greatly afraid of fatal consequences to my wife for want of sleep, she not having, after the great danger was over, had any sleep for more than forty-eight hours. All great cities in hot countries are, I believe, full of dogs, and they, in the very hot weather, keep up during the night a horrible barking and fighting and howling. Upon the particular occasion to which I am adverting they made a noise so terrible and so un- remitted that it was next to impossible that even a person in full health and free from pain should obtain a minute's sleep. I was, about nine in the evening, sitting by the bed. 'I do think/ said she, 'that I could go to sleep now, if it were not for the dogs? Downstairs I went, and out I sallied, in my shirt and trousers, and without shoes and stockings ; and, going to a heap of stones lying beside the road, set to work upon the dogs, going backward and forward, and keeping them at two or three hundred yards' distance from the house. I walked thus the whole night, barefooted, lest the noise of my shoes might possibly reach her ears ; and I remember that the bricks of the causeway were, even in the night, so hot as to be disagreeable to my feet. My exertions produced the desired effect : a sleep of several hours was the consequence, and, at eight o'clock in the morning, off went I to a day's business which was to end at six in the evening.
" Women are all patriots of the soil ; and when her neighbours used to ask my wife whether all English husbands were like hers, she boldly answered in the affirmative. I had business to occupy the whole of my time, Sundays and week-days, except sleeping hours ; but I used to make time to assist her in the taking care of her baby, and in all sorts of things : get up, light her
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fire, boil her tea-kettle, carry her up warm water in cold weather, take the child while she dressed herself and got the breakfast ready, then breakfast, get her in water and wood for the day, then dress myself neatly and sally forth to my business. The moment that was over I used to hasten back to her again j and I no more thought of spending a moment away from her, unless business compelled me, than I thought of quitting the country and going to sea. The thunder and lightning are tremendous in America compared with what they are in England. My wife was at one time very much afraid of thunder and lightning; and, as is the feeling of all such women, and indeed all men too, she wantedf company, and particularly her husband, in those times of danger. I knew well of course that my presence would not diminish the danger ; but, be I at what I might, if within reach of home, I used to quit my business and hasten to her the moment I perceived a thunder-storm approaching. Scores of miles have I, first and last, run on this errand in the streets of Philadelphia ! The Frenchmen who were my scholars used to laugh at me exceedingly on this aceount; and sometimes, when I was making an appointment with them, they would say, with a smile and a bow, ' Sauf le tonnerre toujours Monsieur Cobbett \ ' *
Much is said both wise and otherwise in reference to the obedience which a wife vows to yield to her husband. One who wrote a sketch of the Rev. F. D. Maurice tells us that he met him once at a wedding-breakfast. Maurice proposed the health of the bride and bride- groom. The lady turned round, and in rather bad taste exclaimed, " Now, Mr. Maurice, I call you to witness that I entertain no intention of obeying." Maurice answered with his sad, sweet smile, "Ah, madam, you little know the blessedness of obedience."
Of course no one believes that it is a wife's duty to obey when her husband wishes her to act contrary to the dictates of conscience. » As little is she expected
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to conform to a standard of obedience and service such as was laid down in a conversation overheard between two children who were playing on the sands together. Small boy to little girl : " Do you wish to be my wife ? " .Little girl, after reflection : " Yes." Small boy : " Then pull off my boots." We all rejoice in the fact that woman's rights are very different now from what they used to be, at least in Russia, where, Dr. Lansdell tells us, anciently at a wedding the bridegroom took to church a whip, and in one part of the ceremony lightly applied it to the bride's back, in token that she was to be in subjection. Is there not still, however, much truth in the old couplet :
x Man, love thy wife ; thy husband, wife obey. Wives are our hearts ; we should be head alway?
On a great many points concerning the pecuniary or other interests of the family, the husband will usually be the wisest, and may most properly be treated as the senior or acting partner in the firm.
" The good wife," says Fuller, " commandeth her husband in any equal matter, by constantly obeying him. It was always observed, that what the English gained of the French in battle by valour, the French regained of the English in cunning by treaties. So if the husband should chance by his power in his passion to prejudice his wife's right, she wisely knoweth by compounding and complying, to recover and rectify it again." This is very much what the well-known lines in Hiawatha teach —
As unto the bow the cord is
So unto the man is woman ;
Though she bends him, she obeys him ;
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other !
But indeed it is a sign of something being wrong between married people, wher^ the question which of
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the two shall be subject to the other ever arises. It will never do so when both parties love as they ought, for then the struggle will be not who shall command and control, but who shall serve and yield. As Chaucer says :
When mastery cometh, then sweet Love anon, Flappeth his nimble wings and soon away is flown.
90 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED. CHAPTER XL
" DRIVE GENTLY OVER THE STONES ! "
It were better to meet some dangers half-way, though they come nothing near. — BACON.
Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd. — MILTON.
" DRIVE gently over the stones ! " This piece of advice, which is frequently given to inexperienced whips, may be suggested metaphorically to the newly-married. On the road upon which they have entered there are stony places, which, if not carefully driven over, will almost certainly upset the domestic coach. To accompany one's wife harmoniously on an Irish car is easy compared to the task of accompanying her over these stones on the domestic car.
The first rock ahead which should be signalled 2 dangerous " is the first year of married life. As a rule the first year either mars or makes a marriage. During this period errors may be committed which will cast a shadow over every year that follows. We agree with Mrs. Jameson in thinking that the first year of married life is not as happy as the second. People have to get into the habit of being married, and there are difficult lessons to be learned in the apprenticeship.
A lady once asked Dr. Johnson how in his dictionary he came to; define pastern the knee of a horse ; he immediately answered, " Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance." This is the simple explanation of many an accident that takes place at the commencement of the matrimonial journey. The young couple have not yet learned the dangerous places of the road, and, as a consequence, they drive carelessly over them.
How many people starting in married life throw happiness out of their grasp, and create troubles for
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the rest of their days ! The cause may be generally traced to selfishness, their conceit taking everything that goes amiss as meant for a personal affront, and their wounded self-esteem making life a burden hard to bear, for themselves and others. We can all recognise in every circle such cases ; we are all able to read the moral elsewhere; but in our own case we allow the small breach — that might be healed with very little effort at first — to get wider and wider, and the pair that should become closer and closer, gradually not only cease to,, care for, but have a dread of each other's society.
There is one simple direction which, if carefully regarded, might long preserve the tranquillity of the married life, and ensure no inconsiderable portion of connubial happiness to the observers of it : it is — to beware of the first dispute. " Man and wife," says Jeremy Taylor, "are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their con- versation ; every little thing can blast an infant blossom ; and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like the locks of a new-weaned boy : but when by age and consolida- tion they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have, by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken. So are the early unions of an unfixed marriage; watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. After the hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual confidence and experience, longer than artifice and pretence can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces."
Every little dispute between man and wife is dangerous. It forces good humour out of its channel,
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undermines affection, and insidiously, though perhaps insensibly, wears out and, at last, entirely destroys that cordiality which is the life and soul of matrimonial felicity. As, however, " it's hardly in a body's power to keep at times from being sour," undue importance ought not to be attached to "those little tiffs that sometimes cast a shade on wedlock." Often they are, as the poet goes on to observe, " love in masquerade :
And family jars, look we but o'er the rim, Are filled with honey, even to the brim."
In the Life of St. Francis de Sales we are told that the saint did not approve of the saying, " Never rely on a reconciled enemy. He rather preferred a contrary maxim, and said that a quarrel between friends, when made up, added a new tie to friendship; as experience shows that the calosity formed round a broken bone makes it stronger than before.
Beware of jealousy; "it is the green-eyed monster, which doth make the meat it feeds on." Here is an amusing case in point. A French lady who was jealous of her husband determined to watch his movements. One day, when he told her he was going to Versailles, she followed him, keeping him in sight until she missed him in a passage leading to the railway station. Looking about her for a few minutes, she saw a man coming out of a glove-shop with a rather overdressed lady. Blinded with rage and jealousy, she fancied it was her husband, and without pausing for a moment to consider, bounced suddenly up to him and gave him three or four stinging boxes on the ear. The instant the gentleman turned round she discovered her mistake, and at the same moment caught sight of her husband, who had merely called at a tobacconist's, and was now crossing the street. There was nothing for it but to faint in the arms of the gentleman she had attacked ; while the other lady moved away, to avoid a scene. The stranger,
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astonished to find an unknown lady in his arms, was further startled by a gentleman seizing him by the collar and demanding to know what he meant by embracing that lady. "Why, sir, she boxed my ears, and then fainted," exclaimed the innocent victim. "She is my wife," shouted the angry husband, " and would never have struck you without good cause." Worse than angry words would probably have followed had not the cause of the whole misunderstanding recovered sufficiently to explain how it had aU happened.
A jealous wife is generally considered a proper subject for ridicule; and a woman ought to conceal from her husband any feeling of the kind. Her suspicions may be altogether groundless, and she may be tormenting herself with a whole train of imaginary evils.
On the other hand a husband is bound to abstain from even the appearance of preferring any one else to his wife. When in the presence of others he should indulge her laudable pride by showing that he thinks her an object of importance and preference.
In his Advice to Young Men Cobbett gives this interesting bit of autobiography. " For about two or three years after I was married, I, retaining some of my military manners, used, both in France and America, to romp most famously with the girls that came in my way; till one day at Philadelphia, my wife said to me in a very gentle manner, ' Don't do that, / do not like it.* That was quite enough ; I had never thought on the subject before ; one hair of her head was more dear to me than all the other women in the world, and this I knew that she knew. But I now saw that this was not all that she had a right to from me ; I saw that she had the further claim upon me that I should abstain from everything that might induce others to believe that there was any other woman for whom, even if I were at liberty, I had any affection. I beseech
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young married men to bear this in mind ; for on some trifle of this sort the happiness or misery of a long life frequently turns."
There may be a fanaticism in love as well as in belief, and where people love much they are apt to be exacting one to the other. But although jealousy does imply love, such love as consists in a craving for the affection of its object, it is love which is largely dashed with selfishness. It is incompatible with love of the highest order, for where that exists there is no dread of not being loved enough in return. In this relation as well as in the highest, " There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love."
It is generally admitted that conjugal affection largely depends on mutual confidence. A friend quoted this sentiment the other day in a smoking-room, and added that he made it a rule to tell his wife everything that happened, and in this way they avoided any misunder- standing. " Well, sir," remarked another gentleman present, not to be outdone in generosity, " you are not so open and frank as I am, for I tell my wife a good many things that never happen." "Oh!" exclaimed a third, "I am under no necessity to keep my wife informed regarding my affairs. She can find out five times as much as I know myself without the least trouble."
" How," said a gentleman to a friend who wished to convey a matter of importance to a lady without communicating directly with her, "how can you be certain of her reading the letter, seeing that you have directed it to her husband ? " " That I have managed without the possibility of failure," was the answer ; " she will open it to a certainty, for I have put the word * private ' in the corner."
These anecdotes put in a lively way the well-known fact that it is impossible for married people to keep
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secrets the one from the other. But even to make the attempt is to enter upon ground so dangerous that scarcely any amount of cautious driving will prevent a catastrophe. Unless husband and wife trust each other all in all, the result will be much the same as if they trusted not at all.
We believe that the Delilahs are few who would sell their Samsons to the Philistines when these Samsons have told them the secret source of their great strength. Still, there are secrets entrusted to the clergyman, the physician, the lawyer, the legislator to betray which, even to a wife, would be dishonourable and disgraceful.
A case beautifully illustrating this difficult point in matrimonial relations occurs in the memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, wife of Sir Richard Fanshawe, who was a faithful Royalist during the civil war. Soon after Lady Fanshawe's marriage, she was instigated by some crafty ladies of the court to obtain from her husband a knowledge of some secret political events. The matter is best described in her own words : " And now I thought myself a perfect queen and my husband so glorious a crown, that I more valued myself to be called by his name than to be born a princess, for I knew him very wise and very good, and his soul doted on me ; upon which confidence I will tell you what happened. My Lady Rivers, a brave woman, and one that had suffered many thousand pounds' loss for the King, and whom I had a great reverence for, and she a kind- ness for me as a kinswoman — in discourse she tacitly commended the knowledge of State affairs, and that some women were very happy in a good understanding thereof, as my Lady Aubingny, Lady Isabel Thynne, and divers others, and yet none was at first more capable than I j that in the night she knew there came a post from Paris from the Queen, and that she would be extremely glad to hear what the Queen commanded the King in order to his affairs ; saying, if I would ask
96 HOW TO BE HAPPY THOUGH MARRIED.
my husband privately, he would tell me what he found in the packet, and I might tell her. I that was young and innocent, and to that day had never in my mouth, what news ? — began to think there was more in inquiring into public affairs than I thought of, and that it being a fashionable thing, would make me more beloved of my husband, if that had been possible, than I was. When my husband returned home from council, after welcoming him, as his custom ever was, he went with his handful of papers into his study for an hour or more ; I followed him : he turned hastily and said, 'What would'st thou have, my life?' I told him, * I heard the Prince had received a packet from the Queen, and I guessed it was that in his hands, and I desired to know what was in it.' He smilingly replied, ' My love, I will immediately come to thee ; pray thee go, for I am very busy." When he came out of his closet I revived my suit ; he kissed me and talked of other things. At supper, I would eat nothing; he as usual sat by me, and drank often to me, which was his custom, and was full of discourse to company that was at table. Going to bed I asked again, and said I could not believe he loved me, if he refused to tell me all he knew; but he answered nothing, but stopped my mouth with kisses. So we went to bed ; I cried and he went to sleep. Next morning early, as his custom was, he was called to rise, but began to discourse with me first ; to which I made no reply ; he rose, came on the other side of the bed and kissed me, and drew the curtain softly and went to court. When he came home to dinner, he presently came to me as was usual, and when I had him by the hand, I said, *Thou dost not care to see me troubled;' to which he, taking me in his arms, answered, ' My dearest soul, nothing upon earth can afflict me like that; and when you asked me of my business, it was wholly out of my power to satisfy thee, for my life and fortune shall be thine, and every thought of my heart in which
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the trust I am in may not be revealed ; but my honour is my own, which I cannot preserve if I communicate the Prince's affairs; and pray thee with this answer rest satisfied/ So great was his reason and goodness, that upon consideration it made my folly appear to me so vile, that from that day till the day of his death, I never thought fit to ask him any business but what he communicated freely to me, in order to his estate and family."
When a man comes home tired, hungry, and put out about something that has gone wrong in business, this is not the time for his wife to order him to stand and deliver his secret troubles. Rather, she should give him a well-cooked dinner and say little or nothing. Later on in the evening, when he is rested and has smoked a pipe of peace, he will be only too glad to give her his confidence in return for her sympathetic treatment of him. It seems to me that there is more of vulgar familiarity than of confidence in a man and wife at all times opening each other's letters. A sealed letter is 'sacred; and all persons like to have the first reading of their own letters. Why should a close relationship abrogate respectful courtesy ?
Artemus Ward tells us that when he was at Salt Lake he was introduced to Brigham Young's mother-in-law. " I can't exactly tell you how many there is of her, but it's a good deal." Married people require to drive gently when there is in the way the stumbling-block of "a good deal" of mother- or other relations-in-law. Certainly Adam and Eve were in paradise in this respect. " When I want a nice snug day all to myself," says an
r ingenuous wife, " I tell George dear mother is coming, and then I see nothing of him till one in the morning." " Are yourdomestic relations agreeable?" was the question put to an unhappy-looking specimen of humanity. " Oh, my domestic relations are all right; it is my wife's
D relations that are causing the trouble." It is true we
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read in the Graphic a year or two ago an exception to the usual dislike to mothers-in-law, but the exception was scarcely reassuring. A well-dressed young woman of nineteen informed a magistrate that her own mother had run away with her husband. This mater pulchrior came to stay with her filia pttlchra^ won the affections of the husband, and, at last, withdrew him from his hearth and home. Still it is the duty of people to keep on terms of at least friendly neutrality with their relations-in-law. Where there is disunion there are generally faults on both sides.
We know of a working-man who on the eve of his marriage signed a promise to abstain from intoxicating liquor. He put the document into a frame and presented it to his wife after the wedding as a marriage settle- ment. And certainly there cannot be a better marriage settlement than for a young husband to settle his habits.
The young husband or wife who is in the least degree careless in the use of intoxicating drinks should read the following account which Mr. Gough gives of a case which he met in one of the convict prisons of America. "I was attracted, while speaking to the prisoners in the chapel, by the patient, gentle look of one of the convicts who sat before me, whose whole appearance was that of a mild-tempered, quiet man. After the service, one of the prison officers, in reply to my question, stated that this same man was serving out a life term. I asked what was the possible crime for which he was serving a life term in a State prison. 'Murder.' 'Murder?1 'Yes; he murdered his wife.' Having asked if I might have an interview with him, my request was granted, and I held a conversation with him. 4 My friend, I do not wish to ask you any questions that will be annoying; but I was struck by your appearance, and was so much surprised when I heard of your crime, that I thought I would like to
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ask you a question. May I ? * ' Certainly, sir/ ' Then why did you commit the crime ? What led you to it ? ' Then came such a pitiful story. He said : ' I loved my wife, but I drank to excess. She was a good woman; she never complained; come home when or how I might, she never scolded. I think I never heard a sharp word from her. She would sometimes look at me with such a pitying look that went to my heart; sometimes it made me tender, and I would cry, and promise to do better; at other times it would make me angry. I almost wished she would scold me, rather than look at me with that patient earnestness. I knew I was breaking her heart; but I was a slave to drink. Though I loved her, I knew I was killing her. One day I came home drunk, and as I entered the room I saw her sitting at the table, her face resting on her hand. Oh, my God ! I think I see her now ! As I came in she lifted up her face ; there were tears there ; but she smiled and said, " Well, William." I remember just enough to know that I was mad. The devil entered into me. I rushed into the kitchen, seized my gun, and deliberately shot her as she sat by that table. I am in prison for life, and have no desire to be released. If a pardon was offered me, I think I should refuse it. Buried here in this prison, I wait till the end comes. I trust God has forgiven me for Christ's sake. I have bitterly repented ; I repent every day. Oh, the nights when in the darkness I see her face — see her just as she looked on me that fatal day ! I shall rejoice when the time comes. I pray that I may meet her in heaven.1 This was said with sobbings and tears that were heart-breaking to hear."
" There goes me but for the grace of God ! " " What, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? " No 1 not a dog, but a young man or a young woman who is liable to forget that " small habits well pursued betimes may reach the dignity of crimes." If you do not
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measure your liquor with as much care as strong medicine ; if you are not on your guard against those drinking habits of society and business which first draw, then drag, and then haul — beware lest tyrant custom make you a slave to what has been called " the most authentic incarnation of the principle of evil."
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CHAPTER XII.
FURNISHING.
By wisdom is a house built ; by understanding it is established ; and by knowledge the chambers are filled with all pleasant and precious treasures." — Solomon's Practical Wisdom.
We cannot arrest sunsets nor carve mountains, but we may turn every English home, if we choose, into a picture which shall be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. — RUSKIN.
A CONDITION of pleasantness in a house has a real power in refining and raising the characters of its inmates ; so home should not only be a haven of rest, peace, and sympathy, but should have an element of beauty in all its details. Ugliness and discomfort blunt the sensi- bilities and lower the spirits. D'Israeli said, " Happiness is atmosphere," and from this point of view a few words about furnishing may not be out of place in our inquiry as to how to be happy though married. Certainly the fitting up and arranging of a home will not appear un- important to those who think with Dr. Johnson that it is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible. " Pound St. Paul's church into atoms, and consider any single atom j it is, to be sure, good for nothing ; but put these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant."
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The expense of furnishing is often a source of con- siderable anxiety to young people about to marry. We think, however, that this matrimonial care is, or should be, much more lightly felt than in past years. Compe- tition has made furniture cheaper, and it is now considered " bad form " to crowd rooms or to have in them the large heavy things that were so expensive. Elegance displayed in little things is the order of the day. A few light chairs of different sizes and shapes, a small lounge, one or two little tables, the floor polished round the edges and covered in the centre with a square of carpet, or, if the whole room be stained, with Oriental rugs where required ; the windows hung with some kind of light drapery — what more do newly-married people require in their drawing-room ? Oh ! we have forgotten the piano, and we suppose it is inevitable, but it can easily be hired.
It is a great gain for a young couple to be compelled to economise, for, rich as they may become afterwards, habits of thrift never quite leave them. Their furniture may be scanty and some of it not very new, but common things can be prettily covered, and the dullest of rooms is set off by the knick-knacks that came in so plentifully among the bridal spoils. Besides, if they start with everything they want, there is nothing to wish for, and no pleasure in adding to their possessions. George Eliot has a subtle remark about the "best society, where no one makes an invidious display of anything in particular, and the advantages of the world are taken with that high-bred depreciation which follows from being accustomed to them."
No doubt there will be pictures and photographs, the hanging of which occasions considerable discussion, and perhaps involves the first serious divergence of opinion. We must remember, however, that it is much better to have no pictures than bad ones, and that photographs of scenery are rarely decorative. As regards oncta
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relations when they are really decorative, even Mr. Oscar Wilde can see no reason why their photographs should not be hung on the walls, though he hopes that, if called on to make a stand between the principles of domestic affection and decorative art, the latter may have the first place.
It is a safe rule to have nothing in our houses that we do not know to be useful or think to be beautiful. We should show our love of art and beauty in our surroundings, and bring it to bear in the selection of the smallest household trifle. To have things tasteful and pretty costs no more than to have them ugly ; but it costs a great deal more trouble. Simplicity, appro- priateness, harmony of colour — these produce the best results. When we enter a room, the first feeling ought to be, " How comfortable ! " and the second, as we glance quickly round to discover why, ought to be, " How beautiful ! " Not a touch too much nor too little. The art is to conceal art. Directly affectation enters, beauty goes out. But while there should be nothing bizarre in our method of furnishing, rooms should reflect the individuality of their owners. They should never look as if they were furnished by con- tract. People should allow their own taste to have its way. Whatever we have, let it not be flimsy, but good of its kind. Good things are cheapest in the end, and it is economy to employ good dependable tradespeople.
When he heard of the occurrence of some piece of mischief, George the Fourth used to ask, " Who is she ? " This question may be asked with much more reason when we enter a pretty room. Who is she whose judgment and fingers have so arranged these un- considered trifles as to make out of very little an effect so charming? Compare a bachelor's house with the same house after its master has taken to himself a helpmate. " Bless thee, Bottom 1 bless thee ! thou art
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translated ! " the friends of his former state may well exclaim. Of course we are supposing the lady's head to be furnished, for if that do not contain a certain amount of common sense, good taste, and power of observation, the result will soon be observed in her house. A drawing-room should be for use and not for show merely, and should be furnished accordingly. It should be tidy, but not painfully tidy. Self-respect should lead us to have things nice in our homes, whether the eyes of company are to see them or not. It was surely right of Robinson Crusoe to make his solitary cave look as smart as possible. Who does not respect the wife whose dinner-table is prettily adorned with flowers even on days when no one but her husband has the honour of dining with her ?
To furnish the kitchen is a troublesome and un- satisfactory business. It is unsatisfactory because one expends on kitchen utensils, which are rather dear, a considerable amount of money without having much to show. And it is troublesome to have to distinguish between the many implements a cook really does require and those which she only imagines to be necessary. Still, cook must be supplied with every appliance that is really necessary. Without these there may be an expenditure of time out of all proportion to her task. On the equipoise of that lady's temper depends to a not inconsiderable extent the comfort of the house. Have in the kitchen a good clock, and teach your servants to take a pleasure in making sweet and bright their own special chambers.
Our present sanitary ideas will tolerate no longer curtains on beds, or heavy carpets on the floors of sleeping apartments. Both foster dust, and dust con- ceals the germs of disease. That carpets are sometimes made a too convenient receptable for dust is evident from the answer that was once given by a housemaid. Professing to have become converted to religion, she was
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asked for a proof of the happy change, and thus replied : \"Now," she said, "I sweep under the mats." For bed- rooms there should be narrow, separate, tight-woven strips of carpet around the bed and in front of furniture only. These are easy to shake, and in every sense in harmony with the simplicity and cleanliness which, if health is to be preserved, must pervade the bedroom. The more air it contains the better, and hence every- thing superfluous should be Vanished from it. But we shall not specify the different things which, in our opinion, should, or should not, be found in the several rooms of a house, for after all it is the arrangement of furniture rather than the furniture itself that makes the difference.
If the question be asked, Is it better to pick up furniture at auctions or to buy it in shops? we reply, Avoid auctions. Things are varnished up to the eye, and it is seldom impossible to examine them. So you generally find on returning home from a sale that your purchases are by no means what they seemed.
As regards the expense of furnishing a small house such as young housekeepers of the middle class usually hire when first they settle down in life, this of course varies with circumstances, but even one hundred pounds ought nearly to suffice. To estimate the cost rightly, one should know the tastes of the people concerned, their social position, the size of their house, and the style of the locality in which they propose to live. Very good furniture can sometimes be obtained second-hand, but one must be on their guard against " bargains " that are worthless. There are certain articles, such as lamps, beds, and bedding, that should as a general rule be purchased new.
People are generally in too great haste when fur- nishing. They should be prudent, deliberate, and wait with their eyes open until they see the sort of
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things that will suit them. They should buy the most instantly necessary articles first with ready money, and add to these as they can afford it to carry out ideas formed by observation. They should buy what can be easily replaced after legitimate wear and tear, what their servants can properly attend to, and what will save labour and time.
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CHAPTER XIIL
MARRIED PEOPLE'S MONEY.
Never treat money affairs with levity — money is character. — SIR E. BULWER LYTTON.
A SCOTCH minister, preaching against the love of money, had frequently repeated that it was "the root of all evil." Walking home from the church one old person said to another, "An wasna the minister strang upon the money ? " " Nae doubt," said the other, and added, "Ay, but it's grand to hae the wee bit siller in your hand when ye gang an errand." So too, in spite of all that love-in-a-cottage theorists may say, " it's grand to hae the wee bit siller " when marrying ; unless, indeed, we believe that mortality is one of the effects of matri- mony, as did the girl, who, on meeting a lady whose service she had lately left, and being asked, "Well, Mary, where do you live now ? " answered, " Please ma'am, I don't live now — I'm married." To marry for love and work for silver is quite right, but there should be a reasonable chance of getting work to do and some provision for a rainy day. It is only the stupidity which is without anxiety, that complacently marries on "noth- ing a week ; and that uncertain — very ! " And yet such flying in the face of Providence is often spoken of as being disinterested and heroic, and the quiverfuls of children resulting from it are supposed to be blessed. As if it were a blessing to give children appetites of hunger and thirst, and nothing to satisfy them.
On the other hand, there is some truth in the saying that "what will keep one will keep two." There are bachelors who are so ultra-prudent, and who hold such
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absurd opinions as to the expense of matrimony, that, although they have enough money they have not enough courage to enter the state. Pitt used to say that he could not afford to marry, yet his butcher's bill was so enormous that some one has calculated it as affording his servants about fourteen pounds of meat a day, each man and woman ! For the more economical regulation of his household, if for no other reason, he should have taken to himself a wife.
Newly-married people should be careful not to pitch their rate of expenditure higher than they can hope to continue it; and they should remember that, as Lord Bacon said, "it is less dishonourable to abridge petty charges (expenses) than to stoop to petty gettings." That was excellent advice which Dr. Johnson gave to Boswell when the latter inherited his paternal estate : " You, dear sir, have now a new station, and have, therefore, new cares and new employments. Life, as Cowley seems to say, ought to resemble a well-ordered poem ; of which one rule generally received is, that the exordium should be simple, and should promise little. Begin your new course of life with the least show, and the least expense possible; you may at pleasure increase both, but you cannot easily diminish them. Do not think your estate your own while any man can call upon you for money which you cannot pay; therefore begin with timorous parsimony. Let it be your first care not to be in any man's debt."
The thrifty wife of Benjamin Franklin felt it a gala day indeed when, by long accumulated small savings, she was able to surprise her husband one morning with a china cup and a silver spoon, from which to take his breakfast. Franklin was shocked: "You see how luxury creeps into families in' spite of principles," he said. When his meal was over he went to the store, and rolled home a wheelbarrow full of papers through the streets with his own hands, lest folks should get wind of the china cup, and say he was above his business.
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Although the creeping in of luxury is to be guarded against at the commencement of married life, people should learn to grow rich gracefully. It is no part of wisdom to depreciate the little elegances and social enjoyments of our homes. Those who can afford it act wisely when they furnish their houses with handsome furniture, cover the walls with suggestive paintings, and collect expensive books, for these things afford refined enjoyment. One day a gentleman told Dr. Johnson that he had bought a suit of lace for his wife. Johnson : "Well, sir, you have done a good thing, and a wise thing." "I have done a good thing," said the gentle- man, "but I do not know that I have done a wise thing." Johnson-. " Yes, sir, no money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people ; and a wife is pleased that she is dressed."
We should be particular' about money matters, but not penurious. The penny soul never, it is said, came to twopence. There is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. People are often saving at the wrong place, and spoil the ship for a halfpenny worth of tar. They spare at the spigot, and let all run away at the bunghole.
She is the wise wife who can steer between penurious- ness and such recklessness as is described in the following cutting from an American periodical. " My dear fellow," said Lavender, "it's all very nice to talk about economising and keeping a rigid account of expenses, and that sort of thing, but I've tried it. Two weeks ago I stepped in on my way home Saturda)' night, and I bought just the gayest little Russian leather, cream-laid account-book you ever saw, and a silver pencil to match it. I said to my wife after supper : ' My dear, it seems to me it costs a lot of money to keep house.' She sighed and said : * I know it does, Lavvy ; but I'm sute I can't help it. I'm just as economical as I can be. I don't spend half as much for candy as you do for
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cigars.' I never take any notice of personalities, so I sailed right ahead. * I believe, my dear, that if we were to keep a strict account of everything we spend we could tell just where to cut down. I've bought you a little account-book, and every Monday morning I'll give you some money, and you can set it down on one side ; and then, during the week, you can set down on the other side everything you spend. And then on Saturday night we can go over it and see just where the money goes, and how we can boil things down a little.' Well, sir, she was just delighted — thought it was a first-rate plan, and the pocket account-book was lovely — regular David Copperfield and Dora business. Well, sir, the next Saturday night we got through supper, and she brought out that account-book as proud as possible, and handed it over for inspection. On one side was, ' Received from Lavvy, 50 dols.' That's all right ! Then I looked on the other page, and what do you think was there? * Spent it all / ' Then I laughed, and of course she cried ; and we gave up the account-book racket on the spot by mutual consent. Yes, sir, I've been there, and I know what domestic economy means, I tell you. Let's have a cigar."
It is the fear of this sort of thing, and especially of extravagance in reference to dress, that confirms many men in bachelorship. A society paper tell us that at a recent dance given at the West-end, a married lady of extravagant habits impertinently asked a wealthy old bachelor if he remained single because he could not afford to keep a wife. " My innocent young friend," was the reply, "I could afford to keep three; but I'm not rich enough to pay the milliner's bills of one."
A wife who puts conscience into the management of her husband's money should not be obliged to account to him for the exact manner in which she lays out each penny in the pound. An undue interference on his part will cause much domestic irritation, and may have a bad influence on social morals.
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In Memoirs of the Life of Colonel his wife says, " So liberal was he to her, and of so generous a temper, that he hated the mention of severed purses ; his estate being so much at her disposal that he never would receive an account of anything she expended."
No one can feel dignified, free, and happy without the control of a certain amount of money for the graces, the elegant adornments, and, above all, for the charities of life. The hard-drawn line of simply paying the bills closes a thousand avenues to gentle joys and pleasures in a woman's daily life.
We would advise all wives to strike the iron when hot, so to speak, by getting their husbands, before the ardour of the honeymoon cools, to give them an annual allowance. The little unavoidable demands on a husband's purse, to which a wife is so frequently compelled to have recourse, are very apt to create bickering and discord ; and when once good-humour is put out of the way, it is not such an easy matter to bring it back again.
A Chicago young lady, on being asked the usual question in which the words "love, honour, and obey" occur, made the straightforward reply ; " Yes, I will, if he does what he promises me financially." The conduct of some husbands almost justified this answer.
As regards the important subject of Life Insurance, there are few husbandi and fathers who can afford to be indifferent to the possibility of making adequate and immediate provision for those dependent upon them, in case of their sudden removal.
This matter of Life Insurance should be settled before' marriage, as well as all other monetary and legal arrange- ments that have to be made either with the wife that is to be, or with her relations, because post-matrimonial business details may introduce notes of discord into what might have been a harmonious home. " When I courted her,. I took lawyer's advice, and signed every letter to my love-*-* Yours, without prejudice I' ° It may not be
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necessary to be quite so cautious as the lover who tells us this; but he was certainly right in transacting his legal business before marriage rather than afterwards.
" Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience ; you will find it a calamity." Douglas Jerrold says that " the shirt of Nessus was a shirt not paid for." Those who would be happy though married must pitch their scale of living a degree below their means, rather than up to them ; but this can only be done by keeping a careful account of income and expenditure. John Locke strongly advised this course; " Nothing/* he said, " is likelier to keep a man within compass than, having constantly before his eyes the state of his affairs in a regular course of account." The Duke of Wellington kept an accurate detailed account of all the moneys received and expended by him. " I make a point," he said, " of paying my own bills, and I advise every one to do the same. Formerly I used to trust a confidential servant to pay them, but I was cured of that folly by receiving one morning, to my great surprise, dues of a year or two's standing. The fellow had speculated with my money, and left my bills unpaid." Talking of debt, his remark was, " It makes a slave of a man." Washing- ton was as particular as Wellington was in matters of business detail. He did not disdain to scrutinise the smallest outgoings of his household, even when holding the office of President of the American Union.
When Maginn, always drowned in debt, was asked what he paid for his wine, he replied that he did not know; but he believed they "put something down in a book." "This putting down in a book " has proved the ruin of a great many people. The regular weekly payment of tradesmen is not only more honest, but far more economical. I know a wife who says that she cannot afford to get into the books of tradesmen, and who prides herself upon the fact that she will never haunt her husband after her death in the shape of an unpaid bill. These principles will induce married people to
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always try to have a fund reserved for sickness, the necessity of a change of abode, and other contingencies.
Perfect confidence as regards money matters should exist between married people. In a letter to a young lady upon her marriage, Swift says, " I think you ought to be well informed how much your husband's revenue amounts to, and be so good a computer as to keep within it that part of the management which falls to your share, and not to put yourself in the number of those polite ladies who think they gain a great point when they have teased their husbands to buy them a new equipage, a laced head, or a fine'petticoat, without once considering what long score remained unpaid to the butcher,"
With regard to keeping up appearances, it must be remembered that few people can afford to disregard them entirely. A shabby hat that in a rich man would pass for perhaps an amiable eccentricity, might conceivably cause the tailor to send in his bill to a poorer customer. In this matter, as in so many others, we may act from a right or from a wrong motive. Nowhere is the attempt to keep up appearances more praiseworthy than in the case of those who have to housekeep upon very small incomes. The cotter's wife in Burns's poem who—-
Wi* her needle and her sheers, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new —
deserves the title of heroine for her efforts to keep up appearances.