Marriage

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 298, 17 December 1936, Page 28

Marriage

BY SIB SEYMOUR HICKS You ask me to the choosing of a wife? My boy, this is a very serious undertaking!

As regards marriage, we are all, even the most knowing of us, in the lap of the gods. The best we cun hope for is that the gods won’t open their knees and drop us on the floor. However much you want money, nevor marry for it. The woman who marries for money is not to be applauded. She is only a blackleg of tno oldest profession. She is taking up stock which her more honest s.SiCis ouy on margin.

It is a mistake to think that marriage was invented for women to earn their living honestly by. Look at the lady of your thoughts,, and if she has a mother with pronounced avoirdupois, be sure she will outweigh that mother at the same age. Never trust the obliging mother of a beautiful ingenue, for though she can make exits if she feels you want her to, she cau also make entrances when she thinks you don’t. There is a freemasonry between a mother and a prospective bride, into which the bridegroom is never initiated. Remember also that there is nothing so difficult for a woman as to look a year younger than her face. The woman of twenty-live who assists Haluro has fallen back early on hor last line of trenches and will look like the devil at forty. It’s a sad pity that so many women will make up for lost time.

Never imagine because you buy a chinchilla coat for a woman it is to keep her warm. It is for a far, fai better thing than that: it is to keep her p easant. Few women need ever catch cold if they are, as is so often the case, properly wrapped up in themselves.

To many women pettj ailments are their chief attraction, and tuesc are so many that one may justly wonder if women do not possess double the number of organs men do. Women, it is true are proverbially unpunctual, but don’t forget that if you ever knew one who wasn’t, you wero always late for every appointment she made with you.

It’s a sure sign of being in love if you shave twice.

It is only one’s kind friends who do not realise that, oddly enough, marriage only epueerns two persons. No sane man should take a marriage encore. My son, once married, twice

fly. If your lirst adventure has been disastrous, why make a hobby of adding another noose to your museum? And if, on the other hand, your lirst marriage has been happy, throughout your second you, are being untrue every hour to a blessed memory.

If, by mischance, you marry the wrong one, then all the king’s prectors and all his drab men will never be able to make you happy again: so my advice ta you would be--cut.it as soon as possible, unless you have no fear of the monotony of jail, or the lucid intervals of insanity you may have noticed so constantly in your friends. But' if you are happy married, as 1 am—and that is to be in the ante-room of heaven —don’t imagine that you -will not have many obligations to fulfil to keep your house a happy one. Regularity breeds content, but don’t encourage a dinner gong in your house. Those who can hear it don’t want to, and those who arc deaf can’t. And don’t make a habit of taking things for granted. Cultivate appreciation, above all things, and if you get into a hat at home, go cut and buy your wife one. And don’t forget to praise it, for if you don’t, and your lady wife is pretty, some other fellow will.

Oh, my son! If you have a sweet •wife, give her everything. She has to forgive you so much.

Never imagine that you are ever getting your own way. You will learn as you grow older that your typist is the only woman you can dictate to. Ponder that it is quito unnecessary to dine at expensive restaurants if your wife is at home eating cold mutton. And never think because she turns last year’s dress that she wouldn’t prefer a new one. She does so probably

because she is a much better fellow than you are. It is only the unhappy husband who, if he is away on a pleasant visit, says: “This reminds me of home; it’s so different.’’

My son, a man may have a hundred roosts, but there is only one rest. Don’t flatter yourself that because your wife doesn’t say anything she doesn’t know. Women can only be lenient when they can look with pity on their rival. But once let them think that a weekly agreement may become a long lease, and you will bo surprised what an intelligent interest they will take in your doings. It is no excuse because you are neglecting your wife to say it doesn’t matter because she is only a relation by marriage.

Oh, my son! be thankful every hour for a happy home and the peaee and love that is in it, which you will get nowhere else in all the world.