Fetters—or Freedom.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue IV, 24 January 1903, Page 269

Fetters—or Freedom.

THE WIFE’S SHARE IN THE MARRIAGE COMPACT. To gain a husband and lose a lover, was the description given by a surly old bachelor of the modern marriage. Now. how does a woman so manage to bungle her matrimonial business as to lose her husband as a lovLet us have a confidential little chat on this very important question. Unless a bride takes care in the early stages of her married life, si e niav as easily go into love-bana rnptcy as a man who neglects his business may find himself able to pay only 10/ in the £. The first axiom is, that it is woman’s business to make her home and her husband happy. She has no more right to fail in this than a man has to betray a business trust and get into debt. Most girls either are convinced that “it is so easy to manage a man. once you are married to him." or they feel assured that “it’s mean to try and manage a man.’’ These are both dangerous rocks. <>n which the matrimonial ship may go to pieces in the early part the voyageThe very fact that you are ma.. I to a man makes it much more di.. - cult to manage him. partly becat. e you see so much of him. and partlv because neither of you take quite the same trouble to please as you did when you were engaged. Eve thought it was easy to manage a man 7 But she did not do it with conspicuous success. And a good! many of her daughters have inherited her failing. “Tom comes home so cross from the city! And he is so difficult to get on with!” Surely you can put up with one poor, tired, cross man, who is wearied with the struggles he has made all day to provide comforts —perhaps luxuries —for you and the bairns? Marriage is a partnership. The man .pledges himself to work for the material needs of wife, home and children. The woman’s end of the business is to radiate love, tact, sympathy and soothing forbearann.. If she tai’s to play this role in her married life, she is like a defaulting partner who absconds with the capital and bank balance of his firm. It isn’t playing fair, it’s bad business. and it involves home, husband and co. in affectional ruin when a

wife fails to realise that her partnership stands for the love, romance and restful beauty of life, as opposed to rush and scrimmage and com petition a man meets with in busiNow, take Mr and Mrs Strutton next door. His friends think him a “splendid fellow-” And so he is. He is quite capable of winning a V.C. out of sheer courage and fine character. But Mr S is very stout, and he tries to sing sentimental songs—and can'l keep in time! Of course it is very trying to dainty young little Mrs S . who dreams of a lithe, elegant figured hero. Her own husband is really a hero at heart, but he is solidly and unforgivingly fat, has no taste in dress, and wears appalling plaid suits. Now. Mrs S ought to have found out in the early stages of married life that all the “talking to” in the world will not induce her spouse to diet or take sufficient exercise to keep down his figure. But she never fails to point the moral that sugared tea and sweet cakes are sending up the avoirdupois substance of Mr S to unheroic proportions. She eternally ridicules his sentimental songs, forgetting that miserable law of nature, or music, that the stouter a man grows the more romantic and "airy fairy” his choice of songs becomes- Consequently the Struttons’ marriage is voted as one that failed. Excellent persons, both of them. But she is not prepared to rubber-tyre the matrimonial wheels with womanly tact and that love which covers a nr ’’’tilde of failings. xiien there is Mrs Robinet, an adr.nralble citizen, worthy district visitor and friend in need to everybody —but her husband. She will insist on “speaking her mind,” and thinks it honest to blurt cut things which are much best left unsaid, especially as Mr Robinet is an irritable, rather gouty person. “I really haven’t time to stop and consider everybody’s fads and fancies.” she says, as she bustles about her district, and scolds Mrs Poyser for “nagging” at her husband, who drinks much more than is good for him. Mr Robinet certainly has a good many eccentricities. But his wife forgets that she is under bond and contract to make home life as happy ss possible. And a man in business would have .is much right to say he hadn’t tim» to stop and consider book-keeping

and banking as a woman to -ay she “can’t bother with a man’s fads and fancies.” For. talk as we twentieth century ■vumen will, in ninety-nine eases out of a hundred it’s the woman who makes or mars a marriage. And it's a woman’s end of the business to make the best of the man and the marriage that sh • and th- Fatehave combined to make. And every girl ought to lie taugnt that the world is well lost for the love of a husband gained and keptIt is so easy to keep a lover. But it needs a true woman to retain the deep love of a husband. O O O o o Why Girls Can’t Flay with Tods. Does the intense enthusiasm wh’ch so many women display for game: make for the good the people sav. or rather for ill? A lot of people have b en discussing the question in my hearing of late, and both sides have waxed eloquent on the subject The enthusiasm with which worn"n always take up everything new is no doubt answerable for the fact that so many people overdo their games and bring about physical evil instead of good. These women argue that if men can do this or that, they can do the same, forgetting entirely that there are many things which men can do that women abso utely canrot. There is something more thaiphysique at the back of it all There is the question of anatomy, and while there is a great general ami intimate resemblance between the bod’es of men and women, there is an equally great difference. An example of this is to be found in the fact that you rarely or never see a girl spin a top. though she may have half a dozen brothers, and every one of them plays with tops in the top season. The reason of this is not any mental inaptitude, for it requires no great ability to wind a piece of whipeord around a top. and then throw it with a certain movement to the ground. The difficulty of the nu tter is a phvsical one. and is due primarily to the difference in the way a girl’s collar-bone is set upon her shoulders.