The Athena press. [volume] (Athena, Umatilla County, Or.) 18??-1942, 1905-04-25
HUSBAND MANAGEMENT.

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and who are quick to give up in the
face of difficulties.
This is the tpye of man who, if he
inherits money, early in life develops
convenient ailment that prevents
him from hoeing potatoes but permits,
him to play golf, and 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 such 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 with
out whining.
Probably the most blighting disap-
pointment that ever comes to wife is
when she discovers that she has got to
brace her husband up, and that if
there is an oak tree and twining vine
in theirs, she has got to understudy
the oak.
The picture of great big, husky
man doing the clinging act about a
frail little woman is not a chrome that
appeals to the feminine imagination.
Still, it is fact that a great many
women encounter this in their matri-
monial experience. There. are plenty
of men who have no more backbone
than fishing worm, and about the
hardest job that any woman ever
tackles is to try to make man out Of
one of these wishywashy, foppy
things
But it can be done, and the question
that wife who finds herself in such
a position should ask herself is:
"What can do? How can strengthen
this man SO that he will do his part in
the world? How can prevent this
weakness from wrecking my life, and
my children's lives, as well as his
own?"
The first thing that such woman
should do is to hide her real opinion
of her husband SO deep down in her
soul that he will never discover it. It
is fatal to reproach him with his
failures, to remind him Of his mistakes,
to point out to him his cowardice.
Such mans essential weakness lies
in lack of self confidence. The only
way you can do anything with 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 wife to flatter strong hus-
band is doubtful policy. If you swell
his head, you frequently make him
overbearing and tryannical, but with
weak man even coneeit is the lesser
evil, and there can be no question of
the wisdom of wife applying fiattery
with lavish hand.
She should make her husband believe
that she thinks him the greatest man
in the world, and the strongest and
the most unshakable, and it wouldn't 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 never ending paean
of praise.
She should harp upon the grim cou-
rage with which he stood at his post
and did his duty when Others fell
away, and the Spartan fottitude with
which he endured hardships before
which others quailed.
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 despise 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 coward
that many man takes the brace he
needs to make him fight his battle of
life.
The woman who is married to the
easily discouraged man must deny her
self the pleasure of sympathizing with
him. Such men have craving for
pity that is like an opium flend's
hankering for the pipe. They can
dope themselves up in it 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 is strenuous under
taking to alter mans character and
to graft on to 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 accepts failure she is as weak and
cowardly as he is. - Dorothy Dix, in
Spokesman Review.
1t will bring rich, red blood, firm
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