The Secret of a Happy Home (1896)

Madame." Once taken, the name is generic, inalienable and untransferable. Yet, as few men marry until they have attained legal major

is marred i

sband better than his mother or whatever feminine relative had the training of him succeeded in doing. An opinion which, I remark, is

a-woo

s mother w

-I name it boldly. John is not-he never can be-and would not be if he could-a woman. Taking into consideration the incontrovertible truth that nobody but a woman ever understood another woman-the situati

on and feeling, from her wedded lord, is a baneful growth which is as sure to spring up about the domestic hearth as pursley-named by the

brought up in different households-the man, sometimes, in no household at all-should each be the exact counterpart of the oth

er grows-not that some marriages are unhappy, but that a large percentage of wedded couples jog on comfortably, and, if not without jar, without open scandal. That they do speaks vo

look our subject in the face-inspect it

rcumstances, of the leading fact that he has the full complement of hands and feet usually prescribed by Nature, he bears scrutiny bravely. He is what he would denominate in another, "a white man;" square in his dealings with his fellow-men and with a s

ockets John would be a cipher, and a decimal cipher at that. If some men were not all pocket they would never be Johns, for no Jill would be so demented as to "come tumbling after" them. I have seen a pocket marry off a hump-back,

et in what corresponds in the genus homo with the polywog state in batrachia. The incipient man begins to strut as soon as mamma

them. To deny him the right is to do violence to natural laws. He is the born money-maker, bread-winner,

ntious may think that he ought, prior to the wedding-day, to have hinted to his highland or lowland Mary, that he did not intend to throw unlimited gold into her apron every day. If he had touched t

and the same. Moonlight vows and noonday action should, according to her theory, be in exact harmony. John does not deceive consciously. Wemmick's office tenets differed diametrically from those he held at Walworth where his aged parent toasted the muffins, and Miss. Skiffins made the tea. The mellow fervency of John's "

the key o

gold at h

d early education. John's liking for domesticity is usually an acquired taste, like that for olives and caviare, and to gain aptitude for the duties it involves, requires patience. He needs filing down and chinking, and round

oiled before they were set

rom checkin',

eck

apt to do without it's properly treated beforehand. Somet

nine trainer has been judicious in the use of lubricants-assuasive and dissuasive.

Wordsworth tells us heaven lies about us in our infancy. The boy whose mother allows him to lounge into her presence with his cap upon his head, whose sisters wink indulgently at his shirt

returning at evening. It ought not to be an effort for him to rise to his feet when she enters the room, and to comport himself at her table and in her drawing-room as he would at the board and in the parlor of his neighbor's wife. Each of these slight civilities elevates her in her own and in others' eyes, and tends to give her her rightful place as queen of the home and of his heart. She may be maid-of-all-work in a modest establishment, worn and depressed by over-much drudgery, but in her husband'

ng in his home life with the plea-"It is only my wife!" he needs to look

d to cover the deficiency. For example, if by some mortifying combination of mischances, a dish is scantily supplied, he helps it ou

ainful and embarrassing to our hostess. My John led the talk-all unaware of the peril-and when the next sentence would, I felt, be fatal, I pressed his foot under the table. What do you think that blessed innoce

is could furnish a parallel sketch from life. The average John is impervious to glance or gesture. I know one who is a model husband in

me gives her three-cornered frown, I know there are reefs ahead, on

a baby's. It may be true that men are deceivers ever, in money or love affairs. In everyday home life, there is about the most sophisticated, a simplicity of thought and word, a transparency of motive, and, when van

he may be-he needs, in double harness, to be cleverly managed, to be coaxed and petted up to what else woul

who, upon the arrival of unexpected guests, told her maid "not to bother abo

breaking the share in tough roots, eases up, and goes over them until they decay of themselves. In really good ground they leave the soil the richer for having suffered natur

t be intended by Providence as a counterweight to the womanly proclivity to see but one side of a question when we are interested in carrying it to a vote. John is as positive that there are two sides to everything, as Columbus was that the Eastern Hemisphere must have something to balance it. When Mary looks to him for instant assent and earnest sympathy, he casts about for objections, and sets the

tera a dab of wet wool, taking out more and more stiffening and color, until the beautiful pr

hey believe of their own free will-the very designs born of their partner's brains. This is genius, and the practical application thereof is an art in itself. It may also be classified for John's admonition, as the natural reaction of

s, the less he knows it-and vice versa. "He jests at scars who never felt a wound." She who has her Joh

charity. His efforts to master the delicate intricacy of his darling's mental and spiritual organization may be like the would-be careful hold of thumb and finger upon a butterfly's wing, but the pain he causes is inconceivable by him. The suspicion of hurt to the beauti

t silent side of our dear John! Mrs. Whitney, writing of Richard

" says the poor fellow of his sensitive, poetical wife. "She

illustration out of his homely, gentle, compassionate life. He knew

djustment upon his palm of the purse com

, thoughtfully, looking on it. 'With, suc

n their hearts the warmth of the sunshine for the comfortable g

odesty, and enhances her admiration. She is oftener to blame for the disillusion than he. With the perverseness of feminine nature she construes strength into coarseness of

are not to be measured by feminine standards of perfection. Mary has as little perception of

ironment, and survey him in the cool white light of common sense.

ho do not speak to one another than divorced couples. Wars and fightings come upon us, not through matrimony so much as through the manifold infirmities of mortal nature. John, albeit not a woman, is a vertebrate human being, "with hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affection

of temper, are but surface-gusts that do not stir

nfidante, the carping discussion of his failings be prohibited by pride, affection and right taste. This leads me to offer one last tribute to our patient (and ma

se he has no yearning for sympathy, no need of counsel, when he reluctantly admits to himself that that upon which he has ventured most is, in some measure, a disappointment. Be this as it may, Mary may learn discretion from him-and the lesson con