model car. The girl was pretty, and she had a cute trick of looking
up through her lashes, or a baby stare, so they got married without
bothering to find out a single thing about the kind of life each
had led before they met. They wouldn’t have bought a house without
having had an expert see that its title was clear and that there
was no mortgage on it, but they will marry without finding out what
sort of encumbrances are on the lives of their husbands and wives.
They wouldn’t buy a horse or a dog without looking into its pedigree
and finding out what sort of stock it comes from, and whether it is
sound in wind and limb, but they will pass diseased blood on to their
children with no thought of the sort of heredity with which they are
cursing them.
Isn’t it queer that men and women fail to consider the dispositions of
those they marry? Yet that is the thing that people have to live with,
and it is what makes marriage a success or a failure. It isn’t high
and noble principles; it isn’t truth and honor and honesty that makes
or mars a man’s or woman’s happiness in marriage. It is the temper of
their husbands or wives. A man may be a model of all the virtues, and
yet if he is stingy and grouchy and gloomy, his wife will be miserable
with him. A woman may be as chaste as Cæsar’s wife, yet if she nags,
her husband will rue the day he led her to the altar.
All men and women know this, yet a girl will go along and marry a man
who even before marriage gets the sulks over every little thing that
goes wrong, with whom she has to always walk on eggs to avoid riling
him, and who carries his small change in a purse with a snap lock. And
a man will marry a thin, nervous, irritable girl, who is always getting
peeved about everything, and who never can say a thing and let it rest.
And they both wonder after marriage why marriage is a failure, and why
they can’t get along together.
Isn’t it queer that people don’t pick out the kind of husbands and
wives that they want, and that will suit them?
A man who is a student will marry a silly little girl who hasn’t two
ideas in her head to rub together. In the days of courtship it was
inevitable that he should take the measure of her brainlessness and
find out that when he talked to her of books that he spoke of an
unexplored world to her, and that when he discussed the things in which
he was interested she yawned in his face. Nor could he help perceiving
that her chatter was the chatter of a magpie, and the things in which
she delighted were things that bored him stiff.
His common sense shrieked to him that marriage between two people who
had not one single idea, nor an ideal, nor a thought, nor a desire, in
common was bound to be a failure. But the man, wise and sophisticated
in other things, but clinging blindly to his superstitious belief in
the potency of the marriage ceremony, refused to heed the warning.
Somehow, he was confident that just getting married would change a
silly, ignorant girl into an intellectual woman who would be a fit
companion to him; miraculously render one who had never even read a
sixth best-seller familiar with the world’s best literature, and make
her prefer to discuss world topics to gossip about the people next door.
We wonder why poor men marry fashion-plates; why men who love to eat,
marry girls who loathe the kitchen; why quiet, domestic men marry
girls who live to dance and go to cabarets. They are all poor, blind
heathen, trusting in the marriage ceremony to make an extravagant girl
economical, a frivolous girl serious, an undomestic girl domestic.
Isn’t it queer? Not only do we superstitiously believe in the power of
the marriage ceremony to change other people, but we actually think it
will change ourselves.
The philanderer believes that he will never cast a roaming eye at
another woman as soon as he is married. The loafer believes that he
will be filled full of pep and energy by the mere fact of having a
wife to work for. The stingy, selfish man is confident that he will
enjoy spending money on his family. The girl who has never thought of
anything but dolling herself up and having a good time believes that
as soon as she is married she won’t care any more for fine clothes or
going about, and that she will be perfectly satisfied to stay at home
and save her husband’s money and cook him good things to eat.
But alas! the miracle of the marriage ceremony no more works on us than
it does on those we marry. Long before the honeymoon has waned we make
the discovery that somehow the mysterious something that was to change
us didn’t take, and that we are the same old individuals, with the
same old tastes and desires that we always had. Then to so many comes
the cold, bitter knowledge that they are tied for life to one who is
utterly uncongenial, to one who bores them and gets upon their nerves.
And, queerest of all is it that no matter how unhappily people have
been married, when death or divorce sets them free, they nearly all
want to try matrimony over again!
XXXV
HUSBANDS—THE LIVING CONUNDRUM
A woman writes me that she has been married to a man for sixteen years,
yet she has never got acquainted with him. She says he is good and
kind, but indifferent to her. He never finds fault with her and never
praises her. He spends his evenings at home by his own fireside, but a
mummy would be just about as conversational. All of this has got the
woman guessing, and she can’t figure out whether her husband still
cares for her or not, or whether he regards his marriage as a success
or a failure.
Good gracious, sister, don’t imagine for an instant that you have
anything unique in the way of a husband! All men are full of curious
peculiarities, and no woman ever gets acquainted with one, no matter
whether she has been married to him for sixteen years or sixty. For, as
an old colored friend of mine says: “Husbands is the most undiscovered
nation of people there is.”
No woman ever understands, for instance, why it is that a man who was
an ardent and impetuous wooer turns into a husband with about as much
sentiment and pep to him as a cold buckwheat cake, as soon as the
marriage ceremony is said over him. Nor can she form any idea of why
the man who was willing to risk his life to get her takes so little
interest in her after he has got her. She cannot doubt that he loved
her, because he gave great and indisputable proof of that by assuming
her support for life. Nor can she see any reason for his change of
attitude. She still carries the same line of bait with which she caught
him. She still has the same eyes that he likened to violets drenched
in dew, but he doesn’t notice them. She still has the same white hands
that he used to hold by the hour, but if she wants anybody to hold them
now she has to hunt up some man to whom she is not married. No woman
can ever understand why a man doesn’t put forth the same effort to make
his home a going concern as he does to make his business or profession
a success.
If every man tried to sell himself to his wife as he does to his
employer, or a big customer, or a valuable client, there would be no
disgruntled, dissatisfied married women in the world. If every man
studied his wife’s peculiarities of disposition; if he played on her
weaknesses as deftly and handled her as tactfully as he does a merchant
who is about to place a big order, or a rich patient, every wife in the
land would be eating out of her husband’s hand. If every man paid his
wife a fair wage for her services, as he does his stenographers and
clerks, it would take the heaviest curse off matrimony for millions of
wives.
But, altho to have a contented wife and a peaceful and happy home means
more to a man than to make a million dollars, not one man in a hundred
ever gives any real serious thought or makes any honest effort to make
his marriage a success. He leaves the most important thing in his life
to chance, and he wins out or loses, according to whether fortune is
with him or not. Women never can understand why their husbands refuse
to handle them diplomatically, when it would be money in their pockets
to use the velvet glove instead of the strong-arm method.
Every man knows that he can jolly his wife into doing anything, and
doing without anything. He knows that if he hands her a few cheap
compliments about what a wonderful manager she is and how she helps
him, she will squeeze every nickel. Every man knows that if he tells
his wife how beautiful and lovely she looks in her last year’s dress,
she wouldn’t trade it off for the latest Paris importation. Every man
knows that he can kiss his wife’s eyes shut until she will be blind as
a bat, and that he has only to give her a warm smack on the lips to
make her dumb as an oyster.
And every wife knows that her husband knows these things about her,
because she has furnished him with a complete diagram about how to work
her. And she never knows whether to be mad at him or disgusted with
him, because he would rather fight with her and pay for it in having to
eat bad meals, and having his money wasted and buy her new frocks and
limousines and pearls, than to take the trouble to flatter her a little
and treat her the way she is begging to be treated.
Most of all, women never can understand why their husbands are so
stingy with words, which surely are among the cheapest commodities on
earth. Above everything else, every wife yearns for words of love, for
words of praise from her husband. Just to have her husband pet her, to
have him say to her that she grows dearer and dearer to him every day,
and that he thanks God for giving her to him, pays any woman for all
the sacrifice, all the work, all the suffering that marriage brings
her. It makes her heart sing with joy, and the lack of it fills her
life with tears of despair.
Every man knows this. Every man knows that he can make his wife happy
with just a few words, and yet he withholds them. Even the men who
really love their wives and appreciate all that their wives do for them
refuse to give the starving souls the words that would be the bread
of life to them. No. No wife ever gets acquainted with her husband.
Husbands always keep us guessing to the end of the chapter. Perhaps
that is why we all want one of these living conundrums.
XXXVI
THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
Among my acquaintances is a woman who has a pretty little flapper
daughter. The girl is a good little girl, as playful and innocent as
a kitten. But she bobs her hair, and paints her face, and rouges her
lips, and likes to jazz, and joy-ride, and have a good time just as
thousands of other girls of her age and class are doing. All this
greatly outrages the mother, who tells her daughter that, in her day,
decent girls didn’t paint their faces, or shimmy, and that they stayed
at home evenings and read good books, instead of running around with
japanned-haired boys. And then she winds up her preachment by accusing
her daughter of doing things which she does not do, and prophesying
that she will come to a bad end. Of course, it is mother love and
mother anxiety that makes this woman keep continually before the girl’s
eyes the fate of those who follow the road of pleasure. It never enters
her head that she may be precipitating on her child the catastrophe she
dreads, but that is precisely what she is doing.
She is making the girl feel that she is sophisticated and
worldly-wise—one of the wild, wild women. She is giving the flavor of
forbidden fruit to what would otherwise be harmless little amusements.
She is making the girl reckless, because she is making her believe that
she is under suspicion and is being talked about. Worst of all, she is
firmly implanting in the girl’s mind the idea that she is expected to
go wrong.
And if anything in the world will put the skids under a girl, it is
for her own mother to be continually impressing upon her that she is a
wrong ’un.
When you observe the dealings of parents with their children the thing
at which you wonder most is that fathers and mothers never seem to
realize the power of suggestion. Yet it is one of the most potent
forces in the world, and one that can be directed with almost uncanny
results to the molding and shaping of the characters of the young.
It is hardly too much to say that as the parents think, so are the
children. It is the fixed idea the parents stamp indelibly on the
plastic childish mind which determines the fate in life of the man or
woman.
You can, for instance, take a delicate child and literally “think” it
into health or sickness. If the mother keeps the child forever reminded
it can’t do what other children do because of its poor heart, it can’t
eat this or that because of its bad digestion, and that it mustn’t
be crossed because it is so nervous,—that child will grow up into a
neurotic invalid. But if the mother impresses on it the thought that
it is getting well, and is going to be strong and healthy, unless there
is something radically organically wrong, it will overcome the weakness
with which it was seemingly threatened.
All of us have seen people actually bring upon themselves diseases they
believed they had inherited. They had had it impressed on them from
their infancy that they were bound to die of consumption because all
the Smiths had tuberculosis. Or, that they were doomed to perish with
cancer, because cancer was in the Jones family. Or, to have rheumatism
because the Simkins were all rheumatic, and they died of what they
believed to be inherited diseases that science has proved not to be
inheritable.
It is tragic to think how many parents have killed the children they
loved by putting the death thought upon them, and by making them
believe that they were doomed, and that there was no use in their
trying to be strong and well. It is still more tragic to think of the
millions of people who are failures in the world because their fathers
and mothers have sapped their courage, and slain their initiative by
implanting in their minds the conviction that they were dolts and had
not the ability to succeed.
Once establish the inferiority complex in a child’s mind, and it is
done for. It accepts the belief that it has no ability to do things,
and it attempts nothing. It makes no struggle to rise. It slumps
into the humble position its parents have assigned it. This is why
perpetual fault-finding with a child intensifies its faults. To nag
Johnny continually about his awkwardness, makes him still more awkward.
To be forever calling attention to Tom’s shyness, makes him shrink
more and more out of sight. To fret at Bob’s dulness, makes him feel
that there is no hope for a boy who isn’t quick and alert. Many men
never have the courage to demand their just deserts and take the place
to which they are entitled in business and society because they were
made self-conscious in their childhood. They had it so impressed on
their minds that they were blundering louts, and stupid fools, that
they shrank within themselves, and never had the nerve to push their
fortunes.
And just as you can make a child a failure by holding the thought of
its inferiority before it, you can do much to make it a success by
holding the thought of achievement before it. We unconsciously strive
to be what the people about us expect of us. If Jimmie knows that he
has a reputation for beautiful manners, he will act as a gentleman. If
Tom knows you expect him to make a mark at school or in business, he
will try to make good. If Mary knows you do not think it possible for
her to be anything but sweet and innocent, she is not likely to tarnish
your ideal.
The power of suggestion is so far reaching in its influence that
fathers and mothers should be careful how they use it, and avoid
implanting a weak thought, an evil thought, a thought of failure in
their children’s minds as they would avoid giving them poison.
XXXVII
WOMAN’S MISSIONARY OPPORTUNITY
As a sex women are highly altruistic. There is scarcely a movement in
the world for the uplift of humanity or for ameliorating the sorrows of
the poor and helpless that does not owe its existence to women. It is
women who support the orphan asylums, the homes for old men and women,
the reformatories, the houses for the blind, the places of refuge where
the man just out of prison can go and gather himself together before
starting out on a better life. It is women who nurse in hospitals, and
who carry on mainly the work of the Red Cross and the fight against
the great White Plague. Joan of Arc is the great feminine heroine.
The women that other women envy most are not the great beauties and
sirens of history, or the famous actors and writers, but the Florence
Nightingales and Frances Willards who have been able to do some great
service to their fellow creatures. And deep down in her secret heart,
if every woman was granted her one great wish, it would be to be able
to help her day and generation to make others happier, and to perform
some miracle that would make life easier for all who come after her.
Well, little as she realizes it, that power is possessed by every woman
who has children. In her hands lies the remedy for the greatest sorrow
that tears at the hearts of men and women. She can wipe away half of
the tears of the world. She has the magic that can change innumerable
lives from misery to joy. For the greatest trouble in the world is
domestic trouble. The bitterest disappointment is a marriage that is
a failure. There is no place of torment so hard to endure as a home
of bickering and strife. No enemy can stab you to the heart as does a
cold, selfish, unkind husband or wife.
It lies within the power of mothers to put an end to all this misery,
to stop divorce and the breaking up of homes, and the orphaning of
helpless little children. It is in their power to provide every man and
woman with a good husband and wife, to make every home a prosperous and
peaceful one, and to save other mothers from the agony of seeing their
children mistreated by the men and women to whom they are married.
There is no more appalling thought than that every woman could raise
her children up to be good husbands and wives, and that she does not do
it. On the contrary, nine times out of ten she brings up her sons and
daughters to be exactly the kind of husbands and wives from whom she
prays God on her knees to deliver her own precious darlings.
Most likely the woman is herself the victim of another woman’s cruelty.
Her own marriage has been wretched because her husband’s mother never
taught him to treat women with any courtesy, or consideration, or
chivalry. He was never brought up to consider a woman’s feelings, or
even to extend to her common justice. As a result, his wife has had to
walk on eggs to keep from rousing a demoniacal temper. She has had to
wait on him hand and foot. She has had to wheedle every penny out of
him, and never since her wedding day has her husband made one move to
entertain or amuse her, or done anything to make her happy.
It would seem that a woman who had been through the arid desert of such
a marriage would save some other poor girl from such a fate by raising
up her son to be a good husband. You would think that she would teach
him what a terrible crime it is to take a woman’s life into his hands
and break it; that she would teach him to be gentle and tender to his
wife; that she would impress upon him that a woman earns her share of
the family income, and that it should be given to her outright instead
of being doled out as alms.
You would think that she would ground him, from his infancy up, in the
knowledge of all the little things that make a marriage a failure or
a success to a woman—the little attentions, the little treats, the
word of praise, the compliment on a new dress or hat, the little things
that make a woman’s heart sing with joy, and that makes marriage worth
while to her. The great majority of women, however, never even so much
as think of training their sons to be good husbands. Nor do they train
their daughters to be good wives. Very few mothers would be willing to
see their sons marry the kind of girls their daughters are.
Mother has raised her daughters up to be selfish and spoiled and lazy
and extravagant, and she is ready to foist them without mercy on any
poor young fellows who are taken with their pretty faces. But Heaven
defend her own boys from marrying girls who have never considered any
other human being in the world but themselves, and whose only law is
their own pleasure! You even hear mothers boast that they have never
taught their daughters how to cook, or sew, or keep house, yet the
very foundation of domestic happiness and the prosperity of the family
depend upon the wife being a thrifty manager and making a comfortable
home.
Nor do women instil into their daughters’ minds the truth about
marriage—that it is an obligation that they take upon themselves, and
that they have no right to throw it up and quit because it is full of
hardships and self-sacrifice instead of being the joy-ride they thought
it would be. Neither do mothers pass on to their daughters their own
hardly won knowledge of how to get along with a husband, how to bear
with him and forbear, how to jolly him and handle him with tact and
diplomacy, yet that precious bit of information would save many a
marriage. Believe me that the most important question that any mother
can ask herself is this: “Am I raising up my son and daughter to bless
or curse the woman and man who marry them?”
XXXVIII
HOW TO BE A GOOD HUSBAND
A young man said to me the other day: “I am going to be married, and
I earnestly and honestly desire to make my wife happy, but beyond a
vague and rudimentary impression that I must not beat or starve her, I
haven’t an idea of how to go about the good-husband job. What should a
man do to keep a woman blessing her lucky stars that she married him,
instead of wondering what on earth the fool-killer was doing that she
survived her wedding day?”
“Well, son,” I replied, “your theoretical ground work for being a good
husband is a sound foundation on which to build, tho refraining from
beating your wife is not the matter of course thing that you seem to
think it is. There will be plenty of times when you will want to do so,
and bitterly regret that no perfect gentleman can lay his hands upon
a woman save in the way of kindness, no matter how much she needs a
thrashing or he yearns to give her one.
“While as for giving a wife sustenance and raiment, believe me, that
to be a good provider is one of the brightest jewels in the crown of
a good husband. No matter what other charms and virtues a man may
have, he is a poor makeshift of a husband if he cannot give his wife a
comfortable living. And, on the other hand, no man is a total failure
as a husband if he laps his wife in luxuries. Jewels, and motorcars,
and fine houses, and fine clothes are a consolation prize that takes
the curse off many a woman’s disappointment in marriage.
“Having, then, accorded your wife considerate treatment and given her a
good home, the next step in being a good husband is to play fair with
her on the money question. Get off on the right foot there and you
will save yourself endless bickerings and prevent her from feeling a
bitterness toward you that will grow and grow until it will kill out
all of her affection for you. The first disillusion that many a bride
gets is when she finds out that the prince of her dreams is a tightwad,
who haggles with her over the market money and who is so stingy that
he never gives her a penny of her own. There isn’t a woman in the
world who is enough of a worm of the dust not to resent having to ask
her husband for the money she knows she earns as a housewife. So go
fifty-fifty with your wife on the money proposition. Give her as big an
allowance as you can afford and be decent enough not to ask her what
she does with it.
“The next item in being a good husband is to be affectionate to your
wife. Don’t expect her to take it for granted that you still love her
because you haven’t applied for a divorce from her. You handed her a
fine and convincing line of love talk while you were courting her, and
there is no excuse for your cutting it off and becoming as dumb as an
oyster just as soon as you’ve got her. No normal woman can live without
love and be happy. It is just as necessary to her well-being as food
and drink, and if she is deprived of it she suffers all of the agonies
of soul starvation, which are worse than those of the body. When you
marry a woman you isolate her from the love-making of other men, and so
you are in honor bound to provide her with an ample supply of soft talk
yourself.