The progressive farmer and the cotton plant., 1905-07-04

trying to change his habits.
In one of the vaudeville jokes of last season a
man announces that he is going to Paris. Are
you ~oing to take your wife with youF asks
his friend. would you take a ham sandwich to
a banquet 90 replies the man. And 1t is only, too
true that when a man does take his wife along
with him when he goes out to ENJOY himself, her
attitude is that of the homely, prosaic, uninmagl-
native ham sandwich. She doesn't become enthu-
siastic. She daesn't sparkle. She doesn't thrill
and radiate. Should they go to the theatre, she
Interrupts the brightest witticlsm of the comedl-
an to wonder gloomily if the cat IS IN the pantry
or the house has caught fire.
Then there are the children. Whatever degree
of companionship did exist between husband and
wife during the honeymoon generally gets Its
ouietus>from the first baby. Before that the man
had been king of the household, the one whose
tastes and pleasures and amusements were con-
sidered first. His wife dressed for dinner, and de-
voted her evenings to entertaining him. Alter
the baby's arrival, the husband simply exists
henceforth to supply baby's wants. The young
mother doesn't dress, because baby pulls at her
ribbons and laces. She doesn't spend the evenings
with her husband, because baby has to be rocked
to sleep. The only topic of interest to her IS
sterilized baby-food, and she is relieved, and not
sorry, when her husband takes to going out OF
evenings to amuse himself, because in her desire
to be a good mother she has forgotten what a very
poor wife she has become.
Women do some queer figuring sometimes, but
they never make quite so big an error in their
calculations as when they decide that a baby is
worth more than a husband. Whenever a man
takes to calling his wife mother" it is an in
dictment of her as a failure as a wife. 1t means
that she has passed him up in favor of his chill
dren.
Lack of cheerfulness is still another reason why
women fail as wives. Heaven knows why women
consider it a merit to be melancholy, but they do.
They take life seriously, and borrow trouble at
compound interest. They save up all the little
worries of the day, and when their husbands come
home they regale them with a story of how the
- - IL I-l-o
the window, and the plumbing has sprung a leak,
and the bills are out of reason. 1t makes a dark
blue home atmosphere, so thick with gloom that
you could cut it with a knife; and yet women
wonder that a tired man. with troubles of his own,
wants to get away from it.
The French has a proverb which saws that the
woman who laughs, wins; and certainly no other
charm Is more potent to attract men than good
natured mirth. We see this illustrated in the fact
that it is men and not women that buy humorous
books and the comic papers, and support gay
musical extravaganzas and rollicking farces; and
| yet in the length and breadth of our acquaintance
there are not six men who can put their key in
the latch of the front door secure that the first
sound which they will hear is a wholesome, jolly
laugh, and that at dinner they will be enter
tanned with a recital of all the amusing incidents
of the day, and not with it's mishaps.
Women fail as wives because they lack apprecia-
ton. Wives complain instead of giving thanks.
They grumble because they haven't got automo-
biles, in place of being grateful that they have
SOMEBODY TO Iurh1sn Cnelr car-fare. Ihey weep
because they can't go to Europe, when they ought
to be beaming with JOY because they have a home
to stay in. Now. a man doesn't want his wife to
get out a brass band and a torchlight procession
to celebrate his virtue in supporting his family,
but he does like to feel that his toll and his eff
forts are appreciated, and that his sacrifices are
not made in vain. After a man has worked like
a slave from morning until night, year after year,
for his board and clothes-and that's about all
the average man gets out of what his wife leaves
of his lncOme-It Iaust be pretty hard lines to feel
that all the thanks he receives are whines and re-
nrnaches because he daaSn,+ aaaLa-A