Smyrna times., 1894-07-11
The Ideal Husband.

The Ladies' Home journal has submit
ted to a number of prominent women the
questiOn-"What constitutes q good huS-
band ?'-and publishes their replies in its
June number. The ladies consulted give
various definitions of good husband, but
most of them agree that he should be patient
tender, sympathetic, thoughtful gentle,
true; goodtempered, unselfsh, industrious,
piOus and atfectiOnate Most of them think
that if all have these qualities welldeveloped
it may be possible for woman to put up
with him. One of them, Amelia f. Barr,
also insists that he should be rich, or, at
least, should not be poor and struggling.
But that is a mere matter of detail. If he
has a generous endowment of all the vir-
tues enumerated above, he will also have a
harp and halo, and can easily make a
good salary by exhibiting himself as the
only type of the genuinely good husband
One of the ladies, Mary Hallock FOote
makes the rather inconsistent demand that
this paragon of virtue should also be man.
| She says:
when / asked our wise doctor at home
what sort of a physician l should choose in
the West (meaning to what school he
| should belong, since some schools are so
much better represented than others in the
West,) he answered briefly, as if the ques-
tiOn made him tired, First get man. So
l think we mothers might say to the girls,
if it were at all suppOsable that any girl
would ever ask the question Of what are the
best masculine qualities conducive to a
wifes happiness, First, get man. Man
illness in the highest sense of the word is
surely the natural, and therefore must be
the lasting, bond in marriage"
With all due respect to the ladies who
have answered the question propOunded to
them we submit that they want entirely toe
much for their money, or, at least, more
than the market affords. What most Of
them seem to be in quest of is an angel with
a very large pair of wings. If we are tC
accept their requirements as absolutely es'
sential, the only good husband is the dead
husband, just as the only good Indian is the
dead Indian. But, then, one of them in
ssts strongly that the good husband should
be man as well as an angel. Really,
ladies, this is little too much. If the con
ing woman should raise the standard o
husbands as high as all this, it is to bt
feared that most men would have to remain
unmarried. The tender feminine heart, W.
are sure, would not permit the ladies to in
tiict so much suffering even upon so un
worthy creature as man, and we believe
that in time they would relent, anC
abandoning the impossible, accept will
sweet and heavenly resignation husband
who are only fair to middling' as the livl
stock reports put it in their quotations o
the pork market.
Possibly, when the millennium arrive
the good husband" as defined by thes
ladies-a creature made up of all the bes
elements of earth and Heaven-will ais,
arrive. Butin the meantime we hope thu
ladies will try to content themselves witt
what Mary Hallock Foote demands
simply man. If we could find such
thing as the ideal husband.-pious, sweet
tempered, unselfish, rich and all the rest
it might be interesting to know what h
thought constituted"a good wife," and pre-
cisely the qualities he might take it int
; his exacting head to demand in his consor