Remember, he is not overworking so much for himself as he is
overworking for you and the children. It is the effect of his success
or defeat on the homestead that causes him the agitation. The most of
men after forty-five years of age live not for themselves, but for
their families. They begin to ask themselves anxiously the question:
"How if I should give out, what would become of the folks at home?
Would my children ever get their education? Would my wife have to go
out into the world to earn bread for herself and our little ones? My
eyesight troubles me; how if my eyes should fail? My head gets dizzy;
how if I should drop under apoplexy?" The high pressure of business
life and mechanical life and agricultural life is home pressure.
Some time ago a large London firm decided that if any of their clerks
married on a salary less than L150--that is, $750 a year--he should be
discharged, the supposition being that the temptation might be too
great for misappropriation. The large majority of families in America
live by utmost dint of economy, and to be honest and yet meet one's
family expenses is the appalling question that turns the life of tens
of thousands of men into martyrdom. Let the wife of the overborne and
exhausted husband remember this, and do not nag him about that, and
say you might as well have no husband when the fact is he is dying by
inches that the home may be kept up.