The Golden Censer Part 20

to admit to his home as a sharer of its comforts any other man. It is a common sentiment among any two homeless young men that the first one who marries shall take the other to live with him. Nothing is more absurd or out of place. I do not think there could be so dangerous a foe to the peace of the wife, in case the young man do not think his friend has married wisely,--and he must think so, or he would himself have married her if he could have done so. His criticisms will estrange the husband's heart and cool his love. On the other hand, if he has admired the lady, then the situation is all the more atrocious.

THOSE HORRIBLE EVENTS IN LIFE,

where a man's home is transformed suddenly into what has been bitterly but justly termed a "h.e.l.l on earth," are more than half the time traceable to the carelessness of the husband in not throwing around his wife those barriers which shall ever keep her from temptation. The wife of pure instincts will generally object to the admission of another man to her home as a member of it. How often her womanly and honorable objection is overruled by the husband as the mark of an inhospitable nature. Live alone. Let no one see your meannesses, for the third party will remember and recite those meannesses where you would either never have seen them, or have forgotten them altogether.

BE KIND TO YOUR WIFE.

If you find this difficult, begin by making up your mind that, during the next week, you will not, under any circ.u.mstances whatever, speak a cross word to her. Carry out this resolution as well as you can. Then the next week takes off the strain. The natural tendency of cross words to misery will so startle you that you will soon try it for another week. You will do better on the second trial. This is important for your own peace of mind, for, in scolding and fretting, the average woman, if you get her started, can easily hold her own. This woman is bound to you by stronger ties than you suppose.

GO OFF TWO HUNDRED MILES AND SEE!

She is also bound to you by very strong bonds in the law, as you would find out if you deserted her. She is also ent.i.tled to a very high place in your goings and comings, as society teaches you. When the President is inaugurated, there is a front seat close by for his wife. The Chief Justice administers the oath, and there is another front seat for his wife, also. So you need not be afraid of doing her too much honor. Speak to her respectfully. Perhaps there is a youngster watching you--you have no idea how closely. This youngster will try on his hand governing his mother, if he sees any opportunity whatsoever. Just look to it that he does not see such an opening! Your wife as you will know, has cares of a multifarious kind. Her hours of labor greatly exceed yours, though she cannot concentrate her mind on one thing as you can. She is fitted, by long years of inherited housewifery, to do this and then that with untiring devotion to the interests of her household. You cannot, as a general thing, lighten those legitimate cares save by your smiles. But you are a selfish man if you increase them by requiring any great amount of extra personal attention. You will find it her nature to minister to you in many ways. Let her alone in it. Accept all gratefully, and do something in return

BY WAY OF FORMAL RECEIPT.

You will grow happier day by day, and your wife will be the happiest woman in the neighborhood. She will be proud of you because you have had the brains to be happy and sensible. We hear a good deal of railing against the general wisdom of getting married. There seems to be a sort of popular contagion lately, making it fas.h.i.+onable to fling jeers and jibes at the cares and sorrows of marriage. We find young men writing to the newspapers that it costs them six dollars to board singly, and that the same "style" of living and enjoyment could not be purchased at

A "BOARDING-HOUSE OF ONE'S OWN"

for less than twenty-two. And again the same sort of writer will a.s.sert that he can quit one "boarding-house" when he pleases, whereas he must eat the cold roast beef and cranberry sauce of the other until he crosses the creek called Styx. Let me call this young man Mr. Bachelor, and reply to him in about his own style:

A FEW THOUGHTS IN GENERAL:

1. A man named Payne wrote a seemingly-ordinary song ent.i.tled "Home, Sweet Home." This piece, on account of certain sentiments conveyed, at once received the seal of nearly universal approbation. It is safe to say Mr. Bachelor and the cla.s.s in which he may be placed were not among those who accorded extraordinary attention to the little song. He is and they are, therefore, at once separated from the vast ma.s.s of the people.

Evidently the sentiments of the song were based on experiences largely known to the general gender and unknown to Mr. Bachelor.

2. The man Daniel McFarland was so worthless that his wife refused to live with him, and, sadly enough, fell in love with still another man.

The worthless husband, discovering that Richardson was coming into property which had not always been his own, resorted to an ambuscade, and killed Richardson. To the dullest comprehension this act revealed a deep jealousy. Jealousy is founded on a solid fear of losing something.

In this unhappy family, where the man believed he had nothing to care for, he suddenly awoke to find he had thrown away a pearl richer than all his tribe.

3. It seems to me as natural for a man to establish a home, with a wife, as to grow a beard on his face.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS IN PARTICULAR.

1. At twenty-seven years of age a man whom I know met the finest young woman he had ever seen. He wanted her and he got her. Five years have pa.s.sed.

2. At marriage the man found himself endowed with a G.o.dlike selfishness.

This he probably owed to the past struggle for existence. With this not very estimable faculty he carried to his home a young woman endowed with nearly the opposite faculties. She only acquired selfishness through a.s.sociation with her companion. At the start, then, they were both willin' oxen--one ox was willing to do all the pulling, and the other ox was willing he should.

3. Now the man had also a high faculty called judgment. He continually wondered why the woman did not despise him on account of his selfishness. He soon discovered that it was because the woman lacked sadly in judgment. The baby would lift up its voice in the night. That baby must be attended to. The weather might be very cold. The man despised that fact, but the woman, because it made her teeth ache and her body cake and cramp, feared the cold. But the man also despised the baby and all its appertainings--particularly the appertainings.

Therefore, the man debated within himself that he was very selfish, or he would get up. Perhaps, being a "just" man, the way men go, he really got up about once in a dozen times, but, candidly, he would probably have seen that baby suffer ere he would have attended its wants any oftener. The woman took it for granted that the man would not get up, and yet she did not despise him. She did not have judgment enough to do it.

VANITY AND SELFISHNESS.

4. A man's vanity and selfishness are present (to a woman's perception) in every movement. She likes them. They are the characteristics of masculinity.

5. The man entered matrimony with all the trepidation born out of thinking too much about it. It seemed to him like buying a fifteen-thousand-dollar horse on instalments. This is just as it seems to Mr. Bachelor, too. It was a pretty good price, but it was a high-stepper, a flyer, a beauty. It would take him all his life to pay for it, and it might founder the first year. But he had never in his life wanted anything the way he wanted that woman. Mr. Bachelor has not yet got to that stage.

RETURNING GOOD FOR EVIL.

6. There is little doubt that, speaking of man as an animal, unchastened by the benign influence of religion, "the male hates the sick female."

The female knows that. Yet in return she exhibits toward the sick male a tenderness that makes his hair stand on end when he thinks of his own short-comings.

7. The man's astonishment at reaching thirty was tremendous. He found he was changing, and that marriage was evidently

THE EXPRESS PREPARATION FOR THIS CONTINGENCY.

He used to go to the theatre a great deal. He did not then notice that the air in the auditorium was more rotten than the midnight winds that blow over Chicago from the industrious rendering-houses on her outskirts. It is now a real hards.h.i.+p to go to an ordinary dramatic performance, and he thinks theatre-goers are as a cla.s.s the most discontented people there are in society. He used to spend his earnings in various other places which now weary him beyond measure, and are equally wearisome to those bachelor friends of his who used to keep him company, and are forced by single life, to still frequent such resorts.

THIS HE FINDS OUT

when his wife goes into the country for a week or two. Those two weeks are never halcyon days with him. There is a smell about a restaurant that eloquently pleads the sweetness of home, and there is a lack of confidence expressed in a pewter spoon and a general disinclination to believe that anyone is careful molded in with the thickness of the teacup, which startle him at once into a better conception of his wife's confidence in him.

8. My friend comes home and finds his dressing-gown and slippers in front of the fire. He is tired and cross, and doesn't want to sling ashes nor bang a coal-hod. But the sight of the fire makes him feel better at once, and if there be no fire, there are no ashes. He sits in front of a c.o.ke fire in a grate. His little girl brings his slippers and carries off his shoes--or carries off one shoe and one slipper. Then he falls to thinking that girls are poor property as compared with boys, but that any kind of children are a pretty good investment against one's old age. His increasing wonder is that the whole state of things is so natural. His wife takes comfort in having him in the same room with her.

When he is reading and she is darning socks, she is the very embodiment of the fine French expression "I am content." She is not as beautiful as she once was. But

ALL THE ELEMENTS OF HER BEAUTY

are still present, and with a return of the flesh she has lost in hard work she will have all her looks. A handsome woman is just as handsome to a man as a handsome girl is to a green young man like Mr. Bachelor.

My friend is hugging the sh.o.r.es of personal expense very closely for the purpose of having two weeks in the country with his wife during the heat of July. This woman's face does not intoxicate him as it once unquestionably did. Neither does the "Trovatore miserere," nor the "William Tell" or "Poet and Peasant" overtures so delight him as once upon a time. Nevertheless there is in him a secret joy of possession, calm and pleasant, in contemplating the wife, and a quiet satisfaction, in hearing the music, that the taste of his youth was so thoroughly good.

A WIFE'S PRAYER.

9. When his wife goes to bed she loves to put her head on her husband's knees to say her prayers, and he loves to have her. He has great confidence in a woman's prayers, and he is disposed, selfishly but correctly, to believe the supplication is nearly dual in its character.

In his speech he treats his wife as though she were the wife of an honored friend. If he talked either loosely or coa.r.s.ely to his wife he might fall in love with any woman to whom he showed greater respect. He would, beside, proclaim his folly, for woman has small sense of humor.

DEATH OR WORSE.

10. If my friend were suddenly to lose this home by the death of the wife, he would receive an unmeasured sympathy from all thoughtful men not included in the small cla.s.s who never understood what there was in "Home, Sweet Home," to set people to humming it. If he were to have this wrenched from him by a sudden awakening of his wife to all his faults, and as blind an infatuation with the faults of another man as was once extended to his own, he would know just how Daniel McFarland felt. My friend is induced to believe, however, that his wife will be strongly under his influence so long as he does not inspire her with fear. He will not pound her unless he falls to whisky-guzzling, which, considering that he does not yet use tobacco, is impossible.

SO MUCH OF A PARTICULAR HOME.

By the study of other women than his own wife (which is a very unjust mode of study) man learns to hate women in general. By observing his wife, however, he is inclined to love all her s.e.x. Again, by contemplating himself he falls into detestation of all humankind. Such "men" as young Mr. Bachelor have spent their time in exhaustive subjective researches. They know themselves too well. They should, in reforming, take an easy step upward, and, by contemplating the good points of Swift's Yahoos, somewhat elevate their opinion of the species which they so graciously ornament! A green old age is universally admired. The color of greenness at thirty, however, is not fas.h.i.+onable.

If I have lacked in charity in defending the wisdom of married life, it is because I have seen too much gra.s.s thrown at bad boys. When you hear a fool prating of the misery of married men as compared with single men, answer him according to his folly, or, perhaps better, answer him not at all.