Omaha daily bee., 1902-07-20
FLOWER OF CIVILIZATION.
Difference and P~OIiteness Between
and wife.

Difference and P~oIiteness between
hi and wife.
The man who, after a rude remark to a
lady, begged her pardon, saying he had
thought It was his wife, was of the kind
very apt to be agreeable when outdoors
and dlsagreeable when at home, the man
who not only has never profted by the
old fable Of the sun and the north wind,
who has failed to perceive that courtesy
Is the flower Of civilization and the es-
sence Of Christianity, but who has never
learned that in the long run 1t is a good
paying investment. No man can hope to
retain his wife's affection, II she is much
of a woman, who constantly offends her
sense Of propriety and outrages her feel
ings By his rudeness. She looks with
envy at the woman whose husband listens
with the appearance of pleasant interest
when she speaks, sees always that she is
well served, taps on her bedroom door
before he enters, by his own Difference
obliges that of others; and In the absence
Of courtesy. and its visible evidence Of
appreciation, she ends by dethroning the
demigod that every woman's husband Is
to her in the beginning, holding in his
place al ideal with small resemblance to
himself as the thing she would have liked
for the guardian Of her home, always a
little saddened by realization Of the i'm
possibility of It's actual existence, and
inevitably regarding her husband from a
plane of personal superiority.
A corresponding disregard for her best
happiness Is shown by the woman who
allows herself to treat her husband with
disrespect, who breaks in upon his re-
marks, directs upon him her ridicule,
points out his deficiencies, and complains
Of him to others. That woman's hus-
band, after a while, must feel a deadening
Of senslbility so far as she is concerned;
she may have a partner, she no longer
has a lover. And, meanwhile, she has
lowered her own standard; for, after all,
1t is her husband; and II it is not true
that as the husband the wife is, never
theless the wife takes her rank from and
through him; and II he is so poor a thing,
moreover, II is supposedly the most in the
way Of husbands hat she could attain.
Manners. said Aristotle, are the lesser
morals; and to one who searches there is
a moral and a reason behind every princi-
pie Of their code. The offender against
their code is considered a boor because
he breaks down that which rehnes and
sweetens life, and Nowhere is this code
so vital as in the intimate relations of
the married, where 1t stands forever in
the way Of that rough familiarity which
breeds contempt.
There are individuals who have the singu-
lar notion that attention to the minute
matters Of politeness in general is a con-
fession Of inferiority, and that, as between
husband and wife, 1t is a silly superflulty.
A man lie afraid Of being thought u~xorious
a wife Is afraid OF seeming afraid; each
thinks a certain carelessness, a certain
roughness and brusquerie, the desirable
method in public, leaving one to infer how
much worse the want Of courtesy may be in
private.
Why It should discredit a man to show,
80 far as a sufficiently gentle and differential
manner does it, that his wife is Of more
Importance to him than all the rest Of the
world is. or why a woman should think
her acquaintance would esteem her less on
seeing thai she looks up to her husband,
regards him as the last and greatest work
Of creation should be regarded-as they,
every one Of them, either regard their own
or wish they did-will always be a mystery.
For, In point OF fact, the more either as
serts the others dignity. gracefully and
naturally and as without an effort, the
greater the proportions that dignity as
sumes, while, really, each is honored in
honoring the other, and each is happier.
For the rest, the home where delicate