SIX BAD HUSBANDS AND SIX UNHAPPY WIVES

FOREWORD

The six wives described in this little book are types which exist all over the Christian world.

They may be found everywhere, save in the Orient.

This does not signify that the unselfish, tactful, tender and worthy woman is not in the foreground in the picture of life.

She is.

But her virtues, her nobility, and her ofttimes sorrow, have all been so frequently depicted, that many women who are the creators of their own misfortunes, fall into the error of believing they belong to her class.

It is the writer's impression, based on observation, that a larger number of men marry for love than do women.

Just why so many men who begin married life with love and ideals, end it by being bad husbands, needs a wider and more careful analysis than this little book gives.

But it can do no good wife any harm to study herself, and in reading these pages, try and discover if she appears therein.

The noblest study of womankind is herself.

THE AUTHOR.

SIX BAD HUSBANDS AND SIX
UNHAPPY WIVES

I

The first bad husband had been a very good man until he married. He had built up a successful business and a fair name for himself, and he had done it all without help, and without harming any one else.

He climbed without pulling others down; and he did little acts of kindness as he went along, never hesitating to give a dollar where he felt it was needed, even when anxious about the coming of another dollar to fill its place.

He helped indigent relatives; he aided a widowed cousin to educate her daughter, and always remembered the children in his neighbourhood at Christmas time.

And when he was thirty-two, he decided to settle down and have a home of his own. He married a young woman who had distinguished herself as a bright scholar at college, and he took her away from the drudgery of the schoolroom, where she had been teaching for two years after she graduated. He placed her in a pretty home, and gave her every comfort and all his love and attention.

The wife kept the home in good order, and seemed to be very well satisfied with her condition for a time. When people praised her husband for what he had accomplished alone and with no help, rising from the ranks, as it were, to a place of influence in life's army, she smiled and showed satisfaction.

But after a year passed by she began to wish her husband had acquired more polish—that he had enjoyed better advantages—and she found herself irritated by his manners and his speech.

It pleased her immensely when any one spoke of her as 'a superior woman.' She related such compliments to her husband; and he, too, was pleased, and told her how fortunate he was to have won a wife of such intellectual brilliancy.

Ofttimes he repeated similar compliments to her; telling how proud he felt when other people recognised his good luck. But, little by little, the pride of the husband abated; and just in proportion to the growing self-satisfaction of the wife. As she talked more, he talked less; he grew taciturn; his speech became halting, and his manner constrained.

They had been married five years when this supposedly good and moral husband displayed his badness. He brought home a gift to his wife—one he had thought would give her pleasure. She took great pride in her house, and loved to decorate it with odd and beautiful things.

So he had seen this vase in a window and brought it to her, with almost the vanished look of pleasure in his recently lined face.

The wife looked at it, and her brow contracted. Then she said rather petulantly, 'Dear, you would be wise to consult me before you buy anything for the house; you must know by this time that your own taste is not to be relied upon.'

Then the wife stood aghast as the always gentle and kindly man burst forth. He said:

'I will be DASHED if I endure this any longer.'

Having heard his own voice say 'DASHED' for the first time, he grew reckless and continued:

'I am tired of this life; tired of you. I want you to leave me. I once thought I was something of a man, but you have convinced me that I am absolutely worthless, save as a money-maker. You can take my money and go. I will make enough more to keep myself in comfort and peace. You have convinced me that my taste is vulgar; my manners bad; my speech uncouth. You have convinced me that you are a superior woman, and quite as plainly, I am made to understand that I am an inferior man.

'You have changed my open and generous nature. I have never been selfish or niggardly with you; yet you have made me feel that I wronged you by my liberality to my poor relatives. You think I should save this money for some future rainy day. I have grown afraid of having any generous act of mine known, lest it cause reproof and frowns at home.

'You have made me afraid to talk in your presence. You knew I was not a college man when you married me, but since our marriage you have convinced me that I am an utter ignoramus. I am thankful to any one who helps me to improve my speech and manners in the right way, for I am ambitious enough to want to better myself as I grow older.

'But you never permit me to tell a story without taking the words from my mouth and telling it over.

'You continually humiliate me in the presence of other people by disputing any statement I make and trying to prove me wrong and yourself right.

'No man of any self-respect can enjoy himself in the society of a woman who treats him in this manner; no man can keep on loving a woman who treats him so, and I confess that I no longer love you, and want to go back to my old bachelor freedom.

'My home is the last place on earth to which I look for happiness, and my wife is the last person to whom I look for loving companionship.

'The very best impulses of my nature I have to hide from you, because you do not approve of my liberality and generosity.

'And you have convinced me so absolutely that I am your mental inferior, that I will no longer compel you to live with me.'

Then this bad husband went out and slammed the door and did not come back