KEEPING A HUSBAND

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12211, 8 August 1925, Page 15

KEEPING A HUSBAND

CAN YOU PAY THE PRICE ? By Stella Harley,

Nothing in this world that is worth having and holding can be kept without . effort. Least of all a Husband. We wives, of course, have had it dinned into us from time immemorial that we must never let ourselves go; that we must always look pretty and attractive, even if we are cleaning a grate; that we must present a smiling feme oil all occasions; and; keep domestic troubles ont of all connubial conversation. But there is something of far greater significance than all this. I truly believe that a husband will for-

give unkempt hair, an ill-cooked dinner, and a buttonless shirt, if only his wife continues to laugh at his hoary jokes, and kindles with the same enthusiasm to “effects” that have been staged for her during, all the long years of a long married life. Once let your husband see that he is as a tale that Is told, and your doimestio .serenity is menaced! All the love you bear him, and that transcends the faults that irk you, goes for nought. THE MAGIC CHARM When Sybil married, her friends gazed at her commiseratingly, and said among themselves: “Poor dear Sybil I She’ll never hold him. He’s a born flutterer.” Sybil, fat, not so fair as she once was, and over forthy, , still smiles confidently across the domestic coffee-pot at a spouse who has been a model of fidelity. Because that sagacious wife has never once let her Hubert feel the need of a fresh audience. It must be a wearing game,, yet she seems to like it and to thrive on it. Her domestic happiness, you see, hap? pens to mean more to her than anything else in the world. More than the gratification, of her own intellect or; her own tastes; more than the : interests she has sacrificed in order the more completely to absorb herself in the interests of her mate. She has sacrificed her own personality; but she has held her husband with a magic charm. CAN YOU PAY THE PRICE? Sybil,is not the least little bit smug in her 'serenity. There is no (kindlier or more sympathetic listener when lees successful wives oonfide their to her, and ask her to roveal her own secret. She just tells them quite frankly. that unless the modern woman is prepared to accept marriage as a lifelong vocation in the same self-immo-lating spirit as if she had token the veil, she had better remain single. You may he bursting to quote Keats or Shelley in the uplift of a fresh morning, bub if your liege-lord wants to tell you in minutest detail, the latent exploits of a cinema comedian, over which he and Jones “simply roared, my dear,” last night, then the com? dian it must be. _ There, in a nutshell, is the whole sum of domestic harmony/ «