Fergus County argus. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1886-1946, 1905-04-12
How to Treat Your Hush and,
(By Dorothy Dix


(By Dorothy Dix
Suppose, after a woman is married
to a man, she finds out that he is
one of the kind who are easily dis.
couraged, and who are quick to give
up in the face Of difficulties.
This is the type OF man who, if he
inherits money, early in life develops
a convenient ailment that prevents
him from hoeing potatoes but per-
mits him to play golf, aud who, if he
is poor, is the perpetual victim of
cruel injustice from his employer, and
who has the knack of always coming
home when the larder is lowest, and
the children most ragged, with the an
nouncement that he has lost his job
The truth is that sucn men have no
courage, and whenever they come up
against anything that is really hard,
they throw up their hands and quit.
In her heart every woman has more
or less of contempt, however fond
she may be of him, for the man who
has not strength enough to stand
alone, and grit enough to bear things
without whining.
Probably the most blighting disap-
pointment that ever comes to a wife
is when she discovers that she has
got to brace her husband up, and that
if there is any oak tree and twining
vine in theirs, she has got to under
study the oak.
The picture of a greatfbig, husky
man doing the clinging act about a
frail little woman is not chrome
that appeals to the feminine magma
ton.
Still, it is a fact that a great many
women encounter in their matrimonial
experience. There are plenty of men
who have no more backbone than a
fishing worm, and about the hardest
job that any woman ever tackles is
to try to make a man out of one of
these wishy-washy, floppy things.
But it can be done, and the ques-
ton that a wife, who finds herself in
such a position should ask herself is:
What can l do! How can | strength
en- this man so that he will do his
part in the world? How can l pre-
vent his weakness FROM wrecking my
life, and my children's lives, as we'll
as his OWN"
The first thing that such a woman
should do is to hide her real opin-
ion of her husband so deep down in
her soul that he will never discover it.
1t is fatal to reproach him with his
failures, to remind him of his mis-
takes, to point out to him his cowar-
dice.
Such a mans essential weakness
lies in lack of self confidence. The
n onyrf1, sv%rp y
him is to build this up. and it should
be his wife's daily and hourly effort
to simply saturate him with her faith
in him.
For a wife to fatter strong hus-
band is doubtful policy. If you swell
his head, you frequently make him
overbearing and tyrannical, but with
a weak man even conceit is the less
err evil, and there can be no question
of the wisdom of wife applying fiat
terry with lavish hand.
She should make her husband be-
lieve that she thinks him the greatest
man in the world, and the strongest
and the most unsuitable, and it
wouldn't surprise her a particle if
he moved mountains, or set the river
on fire.
She should sing the might of his
courage, of his determination, of his
perseverance, in a never ending paean
of praise.
She should harp upon the grim
courage with which he stood at his
post and did his duty when others
fell away, and the Spartan fortitude
with which he endured hardships be-
fore which others uuailed."
The more man knows that he does
not possess these qualities for which
his wife lauds him, the more sure he
is to affect them, and to try to live
up to what he believes she thinks he
is. There is no other man who makes
such show of bravery as the man
who suspects his own courage.
Nor should anybody dispise him
for this. Many hero would have
run off the battlefield if it hadn't been
that he was ashamed that his com.
rades should see that he was frighten.
ed, and it is because he is ashamed
for his wife to see that he is COW.
and that many a man taxes the brace
he needs to make him fight his battle
of life.
The woman who is married to the
easily discouraged man must deny
herself the pleasure Of sympathizing
with him. Such men have a craving
for pity that is like an OPIUM fiend's
hankering for a pipe. They can
dope themselves up in 1t until they
lose energy, ambition, and even shame
at being failures.
Hope. praise, courage, encourage
ment. these are the levers with which
wife may boost her weak husband
up the ladder, but sympathy will pull
him down.
OF course it a strenuous under
taking to alter a mans character and
to graft on him qualities that he does
not possess by nature, but wife's
fortune is bound up in her husbands
What he is socially and financially
she is, and if she sits down quietly
and accents failure she is as veal