IS A HUSBAND WORTH HAVING?

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1800, 3 June 1891, Page 5

IS A HUSBAND WORTH HAVING?

"Is a husband worth having?" is the rather invidious question for competitive replies in the last number of • Woman.' One of the successful competitors declares that even now, when to be unmarried is no longer considered social failu;e, there are still women " ready to clutch at anything in the shape of a man rather than go down to the grave in single blessedness," while the more enlightened woman sets to work to earn a living, so that she can afford to regard prospective husbands with a critical eye. Marriage is declared to be the highest state both for man and woman on physiological, social, and moral grounds. Anothet prizetak^r advocates marriages, even with an indifferent partner, as tending to ennoble the character of the wife by suffering. Some of the answers are very hard on husbands. One begins : "Ia a husband worth having ? Not if you can do without him. Why pass your life studying the iIL tempered phases of a man's "mind ? What unbearable creatures they are in Bicknees 2 Which of us that lives with a thing in man 'a clothing only can do as she likes ? "—and so on. Another competitor quot»» the. old saying that "yon can't wait too long for a good busband nor long enough for a bad one." An unconsciously severe lady declares that a husband promotes wider sympathies by enlarging the moral and mental inflneaee of the wife owing to the increased self-denial and patience entailed by bia companionship. But others are more flattering.