How to Be a Good Wife (part I)

Reverence your husband. He sustains by God’s order a position of dignity as head of the family, head of the woman. Any breaking down of this order indicates a mistake in the union or a digression from duty.

Love him. A wife loves as naturally as the sun shines. Love is your best weapon. You conquered him with that in the first place. You can reconquer by the same means.

Do not conceal your love from him. If he is crowded with care, and too busy to seem to heed your love, you need to give all the greater attention to securing his knowledge of your love. If you intermit he will settle down into a hard, cold life, with increased rapidity. Your example will keep the light on his conviction. The more he neglects the fire on the hearth, the more carefully must you feed and guard it. It must not l)e allowed to go out. Once out you must sit forever in the darkness and in the cold.

Forsake all for him. Looking back may be as fatal to von as it was to Lot’s wife. You have voluntarily taken him “for better or for worse.” Henceforth your destinies are intertwined.

Confide in him. Distrust is a bottomless abyss.

Keep his love. It may require much care and thought, bat the boon is vital to your happiness.

Cultivate the modesty and delicacy of your youth. The relations and familiarities of wedded life may seem to tone down the sensitive and retiring instincts of girlhood, but nothing can compensate for the loss of these. However much men may admire the public performance of gifted women, they do not desire that boldness and dash in a wife. The holy blush of a maiden’s modesty is more powerful in hallowing and governing a home than the heaviest armament that ever warrior bore.

Cultivate personal attractiveness. This means the storing of your mind with a knowledge of passing events, and with a goad idea of the world’s general advance. If you read nothing, and make no effort to make yourself attractive, von will soon sink down into a dull hack of stupidity. If your husband never hears from you any words of wisdom, or com­mon information, he will soon hear nothing from you. Dress and gossip soon wear out. If your memory is weak, so that it hardly seems worth while to read, that is additional reason for reading. The disease is advancing to a threatening stage. Keep by you some well-selected book. Read little by little, as you can. Think of what you read. Talk to your husband of it when he comes. If your memory fails you in the critical moment, try it again. Persist, and victory is inevitable. Ask him questions about it. Enlist his interest. Any new thing placed before him will awaken his admiration. A careful reading of the daily and religious papers will enable you to keep him posted by incidental references and state­ments while at table, or while walking or riding, or in the sitting room. Soon he will come to rely upon you for his information on many matters. Then your throne cannot be shaken. This need not occupy many moments each day. But your time will not be worth having without it.

Cultivate physical attractiveness. When you were encouraging the attentions of him you call husband, you did not neglect any item of dress or appearance that could help you. Your hair was always in perfect training. You never greeted him with a ragged or untidy dress or soiled hands. It is true that your “market is made,” but you can not afford to have it “broken.” Cleanliness and good taste will attract now as they did formerly. Keep yourself at your best. Make the most of your physical endowments. Neatness and order break the power of poverty.

Do not forget the power of incidental attentions. The arrow that pierces between the joints of the mail is the one that does the execution. A little time spent by your husband’s side, without actually being busied with either work or plans or complaints, is not wasted. A hand on the shoulder, a look, a creeping of your hand into his, any of the thousand little things which your instinct will teach you how to do, may drive away a cloud, and perpetuate the sunshine.