The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-11-08
TRAINING A WIFE.

me how he can train his wife into
being the ideal helpmeet that every
man desires.
To this says Dorothy Dix in the
New Orleans Picayune, should like
10 respond, marry a girl who is al
ready trained to be a good wife. but
unfortunately this would doom him to
celbacy, for it is a sad fact that no
mother considers it worth her while
to fit her daughter to become a wife.
We have schools of acting, in which
our girls are trained to become Lady
Macbeths, Juliets and Florodora Sex
tettes; schools of music, in which thew
are taught to become high C prima
donnas; schools of stenography and
typewriting and bookkeeping, in which
they are taught to become business
women, but there are no schools in
which they are taught the great pro-
fession of how to be a good wife. We
chuck them into marriage as ignorant
as a baby of all that it takes to make
a happy and comfortable home, and
we trust to luck instead of teaching
to give them inspiration to deal with
a situation that requires the trained
skill of a master mechanic, the
shrewd financiering of a Wall street
trust promoter, and the diplomacy of
an ambassador to the Court of St.
James.
The result is inevitable. Matrimony
works no miracle. Love does wonders,
but it doesn't teach a woman to be
off-hand a helpful wife. The girl who
didn't know chicken from veal be-
fore marriage has still got that to
learn after marriage. The one who is
e1o ri
isn't going to find that matrimony has
inspired her with sudden energy and
a yearning for a neat and strenuous
life She who is eXtravagant also
ascertains that matrimony is no Kee-
ley cure for the bargain counter habit.
In a word, matrimony changes moth
ing but WOmans name and the mere
act of walking to the altar doesn't
teach her how to be a good wife any
more than it teaches her husband how
to practice law, or medicine, or any
other craft of which he is utterly and
totally ignorant
This is a burning shame, and it is
the very root of half of the domestic
discord of the present day. OF course,
in time, the average woman, not be-
ing a fool learns to be a. pretty good
wife. She acquires a knowledge of
how to keep house through trouble
and tribulation and cataclysms with
her husbands hard-earned money, and
even eventually to humor his vanities
and to keep from stepping on the
corns of his prejudices, but before she
arrives at this highly desirable state
of perfection they have both been
through a purgatory of mistakes, blum
ders, quarrels and mutual recrimina-
tons. If the first years of married life
could be eliminated and people could
begin where they leave off, we should
hear less of the divorce question, for
most of the arrangements between
husband and wife begin in the tenn
pestuous days of their honeymoon,
when the bride is trying her prentice
hand on practicing the profession of
a wife. The first mark of suspicion
that many man has that marriage is
a failure comes to him when he sits
down to a breakfast of soggy bread,
leathery steak and weak coffee.
Every man who marries knows that
this is the sort of wife his neighbor
is liable to get. He also knows that
the beautiful and adored angel with
whom he is in love may be likewise a
trifle shy on domestic knowledge, but
every man believes himself to be
magic worker who can change
Eighty society butterfly into house
hold curb. For be it from me to dispei
this illusion. Indeed, would encourage
in for believe it to be true. Women in
this country, and this day, seldom emarry
except for love. More than that, they
earnestly and honestly desire to be
good wives and to make their husbands
happy, and when they fail it is through
lack of knowledge and not of inten-
ton This makes it possible for any
man who has love and tenderness and
strength of purpose to give his wife
the training her mother should have
given her, and to lead her into the
paths where he would have her walk.
Generally speaking, every mans first
desire is for a wife who shall be
pleasant companion, a sensible admin
istrator Of his finances and good
housekeeper. These are perfectly rea-
sonable demands, and he has right
TO expect that she will live up to them
and he does both himself and her an
injustice if he permits her to drag
their married life down to lower
key.
Suppose however and unfortunately
the case is not rare, that after man
is married he finds out that his wife
IS not the dainty and pretty little bit
OF femininity he thought he was espous-
ing, but that she is one of those wom-
en- who think that marriage gives them
carte blanc to wear mother hubbards
and eat onions and lie on a couch
and read trashy novels. What is he
to do? Is he to put up forever with
slatternly wife?
Assuredly not. He should require her
TO be properly and neatly dressed, and
so impress her if necessary with his
disgust at her untidiness that she would
not dare TO neglect her personal ap-
pearance. A woman's vanity is harp
with a thousand strings on which
man may play, and he must, indeed,
be stupid who has to look at curl pa
pers and wrappers across the breakfast
table. A clever and attractive middle
aged woman that l know tells how she
was broken of the dressing-sack habit.
She says that soon after her marriage
she had unconsciously dropped into the
ehything-go enough for-home way of
dressing, when one morning her hus-
oand, whom she had always thought
OF as an abject and uncritical admir-
er' tossed a $40 bill in her lap with
the remark: For heavens sake, go
and buy you some ribbons and gew-
gaws, like you used to wear when you
caught me-" 1t was the first time it
mad ever occurred to her that she had
10 hold the love that she had won
and that she could kill it by her APP
pearance and with disgust at her per-
sonal habits, and the knowledge shock
ed her into narnnananf reformation.