'How to be Happy Though Married.'

New Zealand Mail, Issue 916, 20 September 1889, Page 4

'How to be Happy Though Married.'

ALICE CHITTENDEN. This is a haokneyed subjeot, I grant you, but not more hqekneyed, I am sqre yoq will allow than the unhappiness of homes. We are told that ‘ God setteth the solitary in families,’ but surely when we look around among our friends and acquaintance we see many marriages that cannot be of heaven's making. It takes a good deal of that charity

or love that * seeketh not her own ’ to ensure) happiness in any state, and especially in the married state. * My children,’ said a white-haired father, I as he bade good-bye to his newly-married ■ daughter and her husband, ‘you will be happy just as long as you each seek the happiness.of the other instead of your own.’ There you have the whole secret in a nut* shell. ‘ But,’ asks asad-faced wife, ‘suppose you have always tried to make your husband happy, without having your efforts recognised or appreciated ?’ Then, I fear, you can only find your own happiness in the consciousness of having done your duty ; and, believe me, it will be a greater and higher happiness than you can find by neglecting it fir a vain search after your own pleasure. Seeking the happiness of a husband or wife does not always mean that you must bear injustice and illtreatment iu silence. Selfishness and its twin brother thoughtlessness are two of tho greatest evils that married people have to contend with. If you find them to be the besetting sins of y.;ur husband, and that you cannot shame him out of them by your own generous.conduct, sea if his past training has not had something to do with it ; don’t let it run on ; you will have mere influence to correct it during your honeymoon than you will later. Perhaps he has been the only son of a doting and unwise mother. I once knew' of such a where a gentlem.au o' noble and generous impulses had had his home-life so narrowed by his early training that when he married he allowed his wife to fall into the same state of servitude that his" mother had held before her. .To my mind she was rather the more to be blamed of the two, only—poor woman—sbe erred in kindness and ignoranoe. Fifteen years of this servi. tufle opened her eye 3 to the fact that sho had been wrong, but it was tou late then to repair the wrong, All unconsciously he had grown to feel a contempt for the woman who could so lavishly yield to his slightest and most unreasonable whim. A young friend of mine without a single penny by way of a marriage portion wedded a gentleman of means somewhat older than herself. There was a true foundation of love and respect, but the husband, having been taught to believe that all women were extravagant and not to be trusted in money matters made bis wife no allowance, and exacted from her an acoount of all she spent. Being a woman of high and generous impulses, she could not brook this, and while yet on their honeymoon one day called him to her side and asked him to make her a regular allowance. ‘ I want a certain sum of money that I can call my own,’ said this intrepid wife, *lt need not be large, but if it is only five dollars a month I want it to be my very own, and I wish never to feel obliged to give you an account of it.’ Like a wise man as he was he succumbed to the inevitable, made her a handsome allowance, and thus one of the worst perils of matrimony was avoided. When I commended my friend for her courage, she said : * All my life I had seen my mother suffer from this same trait in my father. A man of great generosity outside his family, he never allowed my mother a dollar of pocket money, and when perfectly reasonable bills were presented ti> him for payment, there was always a scene.' Had mamma taken a firm stand in the early days of her married life, we should have been a much happier family. :1 1 * 1; ‘ “- Don’t condemn "your husbands as ungenerous until you have presented your reasonable requirements' in the most tactful way and failed. If you do fail, in this or other matters, as I Baid before, resolve, • God helping you, to db your own duty, and to so train your bo vs that your fiaughters-in-law shall rise up and call you blessed.