The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

IV.—To a Husband

It is as a husband that your conduct will have the greatest effect on your happiness. All in a wife, beyond her own natural disposition and education, is, nine times out of ten, the work of her husband.

First convince her of the necessity of moderation in expense; make her clearly see the justice of beginning to act upon the presumption that there are children coming. The great danger of all is beginning with a servant. The wife is young, and why is she not to work as well as her husband? If the wife be not able to do all the work to be done in the house, she ought not to have been able to marry.

The next thing to be attended to is your demeanour towards a young wife. The first frown that she receives from you is a dagger to her heart. Let nothing put you out of humour with her.

Every husband who spends his leisure time in company other than that of his wife and family tells her and them that he takes more delight in other company than in theirs. Resolve from the very first never to spend an hour from home unless business or some necessary and rational purpose demand it. If you are called away your wife ought to be fully apprised of the probable duration of the absence and of the time of return. When we consider what a young woman gives up on her wedding day, how can a just man think anything a trifle that affects her happiness?

Though these considerations may demand from us the kindest possible treatment of a wife, the husband is to expect dutiful deportment at her hands. A husband under command is the most contemptible of God's creatures. Am I recommending tyranny? Am I recommending disregard of the wife's opinions and wishes? By no means. But the very nature of things prescribes that there must be a head of every house, and an undivided authority. The wife ought to be heard, and patiently heard; she ought to be reasoned with, and, if possible, convinced; but if she remain opposed to the husband's opinion, his will must be obeyed.

I now come to that great bane of families—jealousy. One thing every husband can do in the way of prevention, and that is to give no ground for it. Few characters are more despicable than that of a jealous-headed husband, and that, not because he has grounds, but because he has not grounds.

If to be happy in the married state requires these precautions, you may ask: Is it not better to remain single? The cares and troubles of the married life are many, but are those of the single life few? Without wives men are poor, helpless mortals.

As to the expense, I firmly believe that a farmer married at twenty-five, and having ten children during the first ten years, would be able to save more money during these years than a bachelor of the same age would be able to save, on the same farm, in a like space of time. The bachelor has no one on whom he can in all cases rely. To me, no being in this world appears so wretched as he.

V.—To a Father

It is yourself that you see in your children. They are the great and unspeakable delight of your youth, the pride of your prime of life, and the props of your old age. From the very beginning ensure in them, if possible, an ardent love for their mother. Your first duty towards them is resolutely to prevent their drawing the means of life from any breast but hers. That is their own; it is their birthright.

The man who is to gain a living by his labour must be drawn away from home; but this will not, if he be made of good stuff, prevent him from doing his share of the duty due to his children. There ought to be no toils, no watchings, no breakings of rest, imposed by this duty, of which he ought not to perform his full share, and that, too, without grudging. The working man, in whatever line, and whether in town or country, who spends his day of rest away from his wife and children is not worthy of the name of father.

The first thing in the rearing of children who have passed from the baby state is, as to the body, plenty of good food; and, as to the mind, constant good example in the parents. There is no other reason for the people in the American states being generally so much taller and stronger than the people in England are, but that, from their birth, they have an abundance of good food; not only of food, but of rich food. Nor is this, in any point of view, an unimportant matter, for a tall man is worth more than a short man. Good food, and plenty of it, is not more necessary to the forming of a stout and able body than to the forming of an active and enterprising spirit. Children should eat often, and as much as they like at a time. They will never take, of plain food, more than it is good for them to take.

The next thing after good and plentiful and plain food is good air. Besides sweet air, children want exercise. Even when they are babies in arms they want tossing and pulling about, and talking and singing to. They will, when they begin, take, if you let them alone, just as much exercise as nature bids them, and no more.

I am of opinion that it is injurious to the mind to press book-learning upon a child at an early age. I must impress my opinion upon every father that his children's happiness ought to be his first object; that book-learning, if it tend to militate against this, ought to be disregarded. A man may read books for ever and be an ignorant creature at last, and even the more ignorant for his reading.