whereby she can earn a living, and he has her follow this occupation
for at least a year. He does this for many reasons. He does it because
he knows how easily money is lost, and he wants to know that his
daughter has in herself the skill and ability to make her own living
if she is ever thrown on her own resources. He does it because he knows
the knowledge that she can stand on her own feet and earn her own bread
and butter and cake, gives a girl a poise nothing else in the world
can give. He does it because the discipline of a business office,
the experience in handling money and an insight into the troubles
and problems of men are the best preparation any girl can have for
matrimony.
A good father chums with his daughter. He begins being confidential
with her in her cradle, and this makes it natural that when she grows
up she should discuss with him the boys who come to see her, and that
father should be able to form her tastes and assiduously guide her in
her choice of a husband. Girls know nothing about men. It is impossible
that they should, but there is nothing about any young chap that father
can’t find out, and if he knew that this youth had a hectic past, or
that one drank, or the other one was a trifling ne’er-do-well, it would
be the simplest thing possible to prevent many an unhappy marriage
by making daughter see a suitor through the sophisticated eyes of a
worldly-wise man, instead of the romantic ones of a young girl.
A good father tries to protect his daughter after he is dead. So, when
he makes his will he leaves her whatever money he has to bequeath her
tied up good and tight in a trust company so that she cannot touch
anything but the interest. He knows that every woman who has any
money is the foredoomed prey of get-rich-quick sharks and all of her
parasitic relatives. He has seen too many women sell their gilt-edge
bonds and invest the proceeds in wildcat stock that promised to pay
40 per cent and never paid a penny. He has seen too many women lend
their money without security to Deacon Jones, because he prayed so
beautifully, or to Uncle John, because they didn’t have the nerve to
say “No” to a member of the family.
Above all, a good father leaves his daughter’s money in trust for her,
not only to save her money but to save her from friction with her
husband. He has seen many a man graft his wife’s fortune deliberately,
and he has seen many more good men, who were poor business men, bring
their wives to poverty. And he knows that it takes more backbone than
the average woman possesses to hold on to her money when the man
she loves is continually asking her for it. So father saves her the
necessity of any arguments on the subject. Are you doing these things
for your daughter, Mr. Man? Are you a good father?
XXVI
THE MORAL MUSCLES OF YOUR CHILDREN
The most overdressed and overindulged children are those whose parents
were poor in their youth. The most undisciplined and uncontrolled
children are those whose parents were reared in strict and stern
households. When you see a little girl playing around in a befrilled
lace and embroidered dress and silk stockings, you do not need to be
told that at her age her mother wore gingham and went barefooted. When
you see a young boy splitting the road open in an imported car you
know that when his father was a lad he trudged on foot to the factory
with his dinner pail on his arm. When you see ill-mannered young
people who smoke and drink and carouse and recognize no law but their
own pleasure; who run roughshod over the rights of others; who have
no respect for age, and who either patronize their parents or treat
them with contempt, you know that they are the offspring of fathers
and mothers who were given few privileges when they were young and who
were coerced by determined and strong-handed parents into walking the
straight and narrow path.
Nothing is more common than to hear people say, “I don’t want my
children to be denied things as I was in my childhood”; “I don’t want
my children to have to work as I did when I was a child”; “I don’t want
my children to be suppressed and tyrannized over as I was when I was
young.”
Indeed, so common is this feeling that sometimes it seems that the
present generation is being brought up by the rule of contraries, and
that the only fixed idea that many parents have is to rear their sons
and daughters exactly opposite from the way they were reared; to give
them everything they didn’t have and to let them do everything they
were not permitted to do.
There is something very pathetic in this. It speaks so eloquently of
the ungratified cravings of childhood, of the weariness of little hands
that never knew any playtime; of the thwarted desires for pleasure
at the time of life when one is mad for amusement, and it is easy to
understand why parents whose own childhood was stinted and dull should
want to lap their children in luxury and give them all the fun they
missed. But in trying to save their children the hardships they have
gone through, they are also cutting their sons and daughters off from
the experiences that make such men and women as they are themselves—the
kind of men and women who rise from poverty to fortune and from
obscurity to fame. For it is not in the lap of ease that successes
are made. It takes struggle and self-denial and discipline to form
character.
That is why we have the proverb that it is three generations from shirt
sleeves to shirt sleeves. The poor man by energy and industry piles
up a fortune, but because he has had to work and save in his youth he
teaches his children to be idlers and wasters and spenders, and they
run through their fortune and their children must go to work again at
the bottom of the wheel. Probably the children of the self-made man
have naturally just as much ability as he has, but they nearly always
amount to nothing, because their foolish father has denied them all
the advantages he had when he was young and he has enervated them with
indulgences.
People who have been brought up in puritanic homes almost invariably
let their children run wild. They put no restraints upon them. They
demand nothing of them. They resent the lack of liberty they had in
their youth, and so they give their children license. They do not seem
to realize that the system at which they rail made good citizens,
instead of the hoodlums which they are turning out. They do not reflect
that they owe their health and strength to clean living; that because
they were made to do things they formed habits of industry; that
because they were made to do hard things just because it was a duty to
do them they developed the grit which keeps men and women from being
quitters; that because they were taught obedience and self-control they
became captains of their own souls and masters of their fate, instead
of being the playthings of their passions and emotions.
They must know, if they stop to think at all, how much better fitted
they were to meet life, how much more secure they were of happiness
than are their children, who have never been taught to do anything
they do not want to do, or to deny themselves the gratification of any
appetite or desire.
For life doesn’t change. The world does not alter and no matter how
much we would like to soft-pad existence for our children and stand
between them and every hardship and sorrow, we cannot do it. At the
last, in one way or another, they must come to grips with fate, and
when they do the weak and dissolute will perish. The spendthrifts will
come to want. The self-seekers will have their hearts broken.
Of course, it is a great temptation for parents to lavish upon their
children everything that money will buy, and it is much easier to give
strong-willed youngsters their heads and let them go their own gait
than it is to hold them in check, but that way destruction lies for
the child. And this is something that parents, who are denying their
children the struggle of life that made them what they are, might well
reflect upon.
XXVII
THE MOTHER-IN-LAW
Undoubtedly there is no other thing over which so many tears are shed
and which is such a potent source of discord and misery as in-laws.
Innumerable young women have the happiness of their youth wrecked by
their quarrels with their mothers-in-law. Innumerable old women have
their last days made bitter to them by the knowledge that they are
unwelcome guests in their sons’ houses and that their daughters-in-law
hate them. Innumerable men are made miserable by being torn between
the two women they love, who fight over them like dogs over a bone.
Discussing this subject the other day, a woman who is a mother-in-law
said:
“Like everything else, the mother-in-law question is a fifty-fifty
proposition, and when they don’t get along together both are to blame.
Certainly it isn’t an easy thing for a woman who has run her own
house and been at the head of everything to take a back seat in her
daughter-in-law’s home. And it isn’t easy to forget that your children
are your children and to keep hands off in their affairs and treat
them with the formality you would strangers.
“On the other hand, most daughters-in-law meet their mothers-in-law
with a chip on their shoulders and are always hunting for trouble. They
seem to feel that when a man marries he should forget the mother who
bore him and wipe out the memory of all the years of close association
that there has been between them. They are even jealous of the
slightest attention and consideration that their husbands show their
mothers.
“They seem to forget that if it wasn’t for these much-resented
mothers-in-law they wouldn’t have any husbands at all, and that the
better husbands they have the more they owe to their mothers-in-law.
“For if a man is tender, and kind, and generous, and considerate to
his wife, it is because his mother has taught him to be chivalrous to
women. She has trained him to be a good husband just as she has trained
him to be a good citizen, and he honors and respects his wife because
he so greatly honors and respects his mother.
“You never saw a bad son who was a good husband. You never hear of a
man who abused and cursed his mother, and regarded her as only a slave
to wait upon him, who didn’t treat his wife the same way. And so we
mothers who raise up clean, straight sons, who enter into marriage with
high ideals and a determination to cherish their wives and make them
happy, have done the girls who get them such a service as they could
not repay if they were down on their knees before us the balance of
their days.
“But if any daughter-in-law has ever lifted her voice in thanks to her
mother-in-law for teaching her son to be unselfish, or to be generous
with money, or to pay her the little attentions that women love, I have
never heard of it.
“And there is another queer thing about daughters-in-law. They seem to
think that marriage should obliterate a man’s past and break all the
ties of his life.
“He and his mother may have been the closest of companions; he may have
asked her advice on every subject and talked over all of his plans with
her, but woe be unto all concerned if he tries that after he takes a
wife.
“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the wife grows green-eyed and
considers it rank treachery to her, and for the sake of peace mother
and son have to forego the little talks that were such a joy to them
both or else do this stealthily and hold a stolen rendezvous.
“Yet it does look as if any woman who wasn’t a moron would have sense
enough to see that any man who could forget his mother and all he owed
to her would be such a disloyal creature that he would forget his wife
when some younger and fairer woman came along.
“Of course, the chief charge that our daughters-in-law have against us
is that we are always meddling in their affairs. Perhaps we do, but
aren’t our children’s affairs our affairs too? Hasn’t the mother who
has raised her son to manhood and who has made him strong and capable
of earning a fine salary a right to say something when she sees his
hard-earned money being wasted, his home neglected and his health
ruined by bad cooking?
“If a mother saw her own daughter treating her husband that way, she
would rebuke her and show her where she was making a fatal mistake, and
the daughter would not resent it. Why can’t a daughter-in-law take the
same advice and profit by it, instead of flying at the throat of the
mother-in-law and considering herself a martyr to mother-in-lawism?
“Of course, there are exceptions to all rules. I know daughters-in-law
who are real daughters to their husbands’ mothers. I even know
daughters-in-law who have borne with angelic patience cranky women
who could not even get along with their own daughters. And I know
mothers-in-law whose presence is like a benediction in a house and
others who are firebrands wherever they go. So perhaps there is no
way to settle the question so long as we are all human and not female
saints. But God pity the mother who is obliged to live with her
children, no matter how kind they may be! She is always the fifth
wheel, and feels it. Perhaps those savages who kill off all the old
people haven’t such a bad plan of disposing of the question, after
all.”
XXVIII
WHY OUR FAMILIES RILE US
A woman wants to know why it is that we find it harder to get along
with our families than we do with other people, and why our own
blood-and-kin rile us more than anybody else on earth. Probably the
main reason why we find it so difficult to live in peace and harmony
with those who are really near and dear to us is because we are too
much alike. We have inherited the same traits of character, and when
these come in collision there is a resounding crash, and the noise of
wrecked tempers and exploding wrath.
Father, an iron-willed, tyrannical gentleman, who has ruled his little
world like a despot, cannot get along with John, who is of the same
fiber, and equally determined to have his own way and do as he pleases.
Father and John may have a very sincere affection for each other and
admire each other’s good qualities, but they can never be together an
hour without getting into a fight over something.
Mother is a born manager, one of the ladies who honestly believe,
with the famous Frenchman, that she could have saved the Almighty
from making some mortifying mistakes if she had been consulted at the
creation. Mary is mother’s own daughter in her perfect belief that she
knows exactly how to run the universe. What wonder, then, that they
clash over every gown and hat that is bought; over every man that comes
to see Mary; over everywhere that Mary goes?
Sometimes the reason that we can’t get along with our own people
is because we are so entirely different from them. Often and often
children are changelings, and those of our own flesh have no tie of
spiritual kinship with us. The father who is a hard-headed, practical
business man has nothing in common with the son who is a quivering
bunch of nerves and sensibilities; who is a dreamer of dreams, and who
counts wealth in terms of beauty, instead of dollars. Mother, who was
a beauty and a belle in her day, with scores of lovers sighing at her
feet, has looked forward to reliving her triumphs in her daughter. And
when daughter grows up to be a big, sturdy young person who wants to
go into business and who loathes society, what wonder that they get on
each other’s nerves?
When you hear parents speak bitterly of what a disappointment children
are, and how ungrateful, it merely means that their children are
different from them. John insists on being a doctor or a lawyer instead
of going into the hardware business father has been building up for
him for twenty years. Mary wants to marry a poor young man, instead of
the nice, settled, rich widower mother has picked out for her. Other
people find John brilliant and talented. Father calls him a fool to his
face because he won’t do father’s way. Other women are sympathetic with
Mary’s romance, and her willingness to sacrifice riches for love. It
infuriates mother to see her throwing an establishment and pearls and a
limousine away, for a sentiment.
Often the reason we cannot get along with our own families is because
they are like a mirror in which we see our own faults in all their
hideousness. Father’s lack of ambition that has kept him from making
anything of his life; mother’s shiftlessness and wastefulness that have
kept the family poor; brother’s brutal temper; sister’s sharp tongue
that cuts like a two-edge sword—these irritate us, and we find them
harder to forgive than we would such defects in other people because we
know that we are, ourselves, prone to just these weaknesses.
Besides these fundamental reasons why it is hard to get along with our
relatives, there are a thousand minor causes of discord. One of the
principal ones is the lack of politeness in the family circle, for most
people feel that good manners are like good clothes, and should be worn
only for the benefit of company. It is an amazing but true thing that
practically the only people who ever say mean, insulting, wounding
things to us are those of our own household.
Strangers listen to us with apparent interest, and laugh at our
jokes. Our friends compliment our new frocks and cars. If our casual
acquaintances do not like our taste or respect our judgment, they keep
silent about it. It is our families who stab our vanity to the quick
by yawning in our faces, and asking us if we are going to tell that
old story over again; who bluntly inform us that our new hat is ten
years too young for us, and that there is nothing so ridiculous as old
women trying to be flappers; who criticize the way we are raising our
children, and tell us the home truths we would rather die than hear.
Still another reason why it is hard to get along with our families is
because it is generally held that the mere fact that you love people
gives you a perfect right to nag them. We speak of family ties as
binding. Binding is right, for in the average home no one can rise up
or sit down, eat or fast, go or come, without having to give an account
of why he or she did it or didn’t do it, and being advised to do it
some other way.
It is for these, and a thousand other reasons, that we find it
difficult to get along with our families, and fly to those who do not
feel that they have a right to boss, correct, advise or otherwise
interfere with us in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.
XXIX
OUR LIVES ARE WHAT WE MAKE THEM
You have been in factory towns where more or less benevolent
corporations have built rows upon rows of houses, each one as like
its neighbor as peas in a pod. But one house would have dirty,
grimy, unwashed windows, with old newspapers or rags stuffed in a
broken window pane. The yard would be filled with old cans and ashes
and refuse, and the place would look like a shack, unfit for human
habitation.
The house next door would have bright and shining windows, with clean,
freshly starched muslin curtains and a gay red geranium in a pot
showing between them. Flowers would be blooming in the yard, and a
vine trained over the doorway, and the place would be a home, bright,
cheerful and attractive. Yet the two houses were exactly alike. The
only difference was in what the people in them made of them.
One cook can take a cheap cut of meat and a handful of vegetables and
make of them a ragout, over which an epicure would smack his lips.
Another cook will take the same meat and vegetables and make of them
a watery stew, with neither flavor nor nutriment to it. It is the same
material, but the difference is in the cooks.
That is the way it is all through life. There are a few fortunate
individuals who seem to be the darlings of the gods, and with whom Lady
Luck walks hand in hand. And there are also a few miserable ones who
appear to have been born double-crossed by fate. But the great majority
of us get a pretty even deal. We have the same family relationships.
We go to the same schools. We have the same chance to work, and the
balance is up to us. We are happy or miserable, successful or failures,
rich or poor, according to what we make out of our lives. We marry,
millions of us. And set up homes. One out of every seven of the
marriages ends in divorce. More than three-fourths of the homes are
wrecked, not because there is anything especially wrong, not because
either husband or wife is an outbreaking criminal, but because they are
too ignorant or too selfish to make their marriage a success.
All husbands and wives are cut off the same bolt of humanity. No man is
perfect. No woman is an angel. No domestic machine runs along without a
jar or a hitch. Every marriage calls for sacrifices, for patience, for
forgiveness, endurance, and you get out of it just what you put into
it—heaven or hell.
You go to homes that simply irradiate peace and love and good
cheer, where there is a happy and contented man, and a smiling and
blissful woman: where there are fine children growing up in the right
atmosphere. And you go to another home that is a place of torment,
where a surly man snarls and snaps, and a disgruntled woman whines and
complains, and unruly, uncontrolled children fight like the Kilkenny
cats.
Yet both of these families started out with the same equipment. Both
couples were in love when they were married. Both had about the same
amount of money. Both were called upon to make the same sacrifices.
Both had the same chances at happiness. Yet one made a success of
marriage, and the other failed.
We talk about opportunity, and when we fail we lay the blame on luck.
We say we never had a chance. But the truth is that we are our own
luck, that we make our own opportunities.
Did you ever think that every day in the year there are thousands of
green country boys going into every big city, seeking their fortunes,
and thousands of city boys leaving those same cities because they think
that everything is overcrowded and overdone, and that they have no
opportunity there? And many of those country boys will find the chance
the city boy overlooked, and pick up the fortune he passed by.
The world is full of failures, croaking that there is no money in
farming or the mercantile business, and warning young men that they
will starve if they become lawyers, or doctors, or actors, or writers,
or artists. Yet there are rich farmers with bursting granaries.
Everywhere millionaire business men. There are world-famous lawyers and
doctors and matinée idols and men who write best sellers.
And the successes are side by side with the failures, working in the
same environment, under the same conditions, and the only difference
is the difference in the men themselves. It is the difference in the
energy, the grit, the determination, the stick-at-iveness, the heart
and soul and brains that one man put into his work and the other
didn’t. Whether we are happy or not depends upon ourselves, for in
reality we all have pretty much the same raw material with which to
work.
Sickness, suffering, the death of those we love, disappointment,
come to us all. The poorest woman alive and the millionairess bear
their children in the same agony, and weep the same tears over little
coffins. Money does not buy love, tenderness, nor peace of mind, and
just as many hearts ache under silver brocade as under cotton.
But we can hold our souls serene if we will. We can keep from fretting.
We can resolutely extract the sweet instead of the bitter out of life.
We can dwell on our blessings instead of our miseries, and we can
acquire a philosophy that will enable us to laugh instead of weep over
the misadventures that befall us.
For our lives are what we make them. It is all up to us.
XXX
HUSBAND LOSERS
Three divorced women were talking together the other day and one of
them said:
“When we wives lose our husbands we always accuse some other woman of
having stolen them from us; and we cry out that our husbands are cruel
ingrates, who have taken the best years of our lives and then thrown
us aside like broken toys when we were no longer young and beautiful.
And we pose as blameless martyrs who are the pitiful victims of man’s
perfidy.
“Of course, it saves our faces to be able to lay all the blame for our
wrecked homes on others, and it soothes our hurt vanity to be wept over
as a poor, innocent, deserted wife. But in the still watches of the
night, when we have it out with our own souls, there are mighty few of
us who can shrive our consciences and know that we are blameless.