The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Anonymous (the unexpected everything .txt) 📗
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And I would here caution you against giving way to little misunderstandings in early married life. Sometimes trifling matters, for want of some forbearance or concession on one side on the other, perhaps on both sides, accumulate into serious results. These differences might be avoided by married partners studying each other's peculiarities of character, with the aim of mutually correcting, in a kindly spirit, any wrong tendency or temper which may sometimes show itself. Should you find you have inadvertently given pain to your husband, do not rest until you have ascertained the cause of his disquiet and succeeded in allaying the unhappy feeling. The earnest desire to please each other should by no means terminate on the wedding day, but be studiously continued through married life. Each should always endeavor to think the best of the other, and instantly reject every thought that might tend to weaken the bond of mutual preference and perfect trust.
If he be wise, he will leave the housekeeping entirely to you; his time and attention can be better employed elsewhere. To enable you to do this wisely, you should, long before you marry, become familiar with the quality and prices of articles of consumption, and where they can best be obtained. Every wife should be able to cook well, whether she has to do it herself or not. Health and good humor greatly depend upon the food being of good quality, well cooked, and nicely served up. She should also be able, if needful, to make and mend her own and children's clothes.
Too much importance cannot be attached to cleanliness. Men may be careless as to their own personal appearance, and may, from the nature of their business, be negligent in their dress, but they dislike to see any disregard in the dress and appearance of their wives. Nothing so depresses a man and makes him dislike and neglect his home as to have a wife who is slovenly in her dress and unclean in her habits. Beauty of face and form will not compensate for these defects. The charm of purity and cleanliness never ends but with life itself. These are matters that do not involve any great labor or expense. The use of the bath, and the simplest fabrics, shaped by your own supple fingers, will be all that is necessary. These attractions will act like a magnet upon your husband. Never fear that there will be any influence strong enough to take him from your side.
An experience of many years of observation has convinced me that where a pure, industrious, and cheerful wife meets her husband with a bright smile on the threshold of her dwelling, that man will never leave the home for any other place.
As all people are liable to illness, every young woman should aim at being an efficient nurse. In case of illness, it is now generally admitted that good nursing is of more value than medicine. To a sick husband, a little gruel or other trifle prepared and given by his wife's own hands will confer much more benefit than if prepared and given by another. Should it happen to you to fall ill, you may expect your husband to do his best; but you must not be surprised if he is not your equal in that department. Nursing is one of the many useful things which women can do better than men. A practical knowledge of nursing will enable you to be useful beyond your own family, and will enhance your value as a neighbor.
You have often, I trust, experienced the pleasure of serving others from disinterested motives, and found that the pleasure has been deeper and purer when you have engaged in doing good to those who could not make you any return. This you have found to be the case wherever you have had charge of a baby—one of those little ones of whom the Lord says: “Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.” You have perhaps been surprised to find how easy it was to perform such a duty, and let me assure you that you may always expect to find it easy to perform your duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call you. He never requires anything from any of His creatures beyond what He gives them power to do. He is no hard task-master. You have only to look to Him and do your best, and then you may safely leave the result in His hands.
Of all God's creatures, I know no happier one than a young mother with a good husband and a healthy baby. I say a healthy baby, for that implies healthy parents, especially a healthy mother. She may justly feel proud that God has intrusted a young immortal to her care, and she should at all times bear in mind that it is His gift. While it is on all hands considered honorable to hold a commission from the President, and to fill a high office, contributing to the welfare of many people, a mother may feel her office at least as honorable, seeing she has intrusted to her the rearing and training of an immortal being, and that she holds her commission direct from the King of Kings. For, recollect, it is only by God's blessing that she becomes a mother; for such is the present state of society that many very worthy married people have not the privilege of offspring, although they are intensely fond of children and seem to have no other earthly want. They may, nevertheless, be very useful, and therefore happy, in a different sphere, by the adoption of nephews and nieces or in some similar way.
AT THE BIRTH OF HER FIRST CHILDthere is opened in the mother's heart a new well of love, such as she had not known before; and although she may fancy that this is all spent upon her babe, it is not so, for she loves her God, her husband, and everybody else better than ever. The father, too, is similarly affected; he also has a warmer love for his wife and for all his connections.
A similar idea is well expressed by Möhler, a German writer, who says: “The power of selfishness, which is inwoven with our whole being, is altogether broken by marriage, and by degrees love, becoming more and more pure, takes its place.” When a man marries he gives himself up entirely to another being; in this affair of life he first goes out of himself, and inflicts the first deadly wound on his egotism. By every child with which his marriage is blessed, nature renews the same attack on his selfhood, causes him to live less for himself, and more—even without being distinctly conscious of it—for others; his heart expands in proportion as the claimants upon it increase, and, bursting the bonds of its former narrow exclusiveness, it eventually extends its sympathies to all around.
Whenever a mother is supplying her baby with the food which God has so wisely provided for it, or is ministering to any other of its numerous and increasing wants, she may feel that everything she does for it is pleasing to her Heavenly Father and has its immediate reward in the delight she experiences in the act.
I can fancy that when a mother has washed her baby, and before she dresses it has a good romp with it, smothering it with kisses, calling it all the beauties and darlings and pets and jewels she can think of, and talking any amount of nonsense at the top of her voice—the baby all the while cooing, chirping, or even screaming with delight—at such a time, I say, I can easily fancy that the angels are looking on approvingly and enjoying the scene. And why not? “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
From the time that an infant first becomes conscious of its wants, and long afterwards, it looks to its mother to supply them all, fully believing her able to do so. She is, in fact, in place of God to it, and it would be well for many of us if we trusted our Heavenly Father as simply and as fully as the infant does its earthly mother.
Those who know no better, when they see a mother patiently watching her sleeping babe, might wonder that she does not feel the want of company. She has, however, company that they know not of, and of which even she herself may not be conscious. If only our eyes were open, we might see that she is not the only one that is so engaged—that angels are also occupied in watching the babe and in supporting her. I entirely agree with Dr. Watts, where, in his “Cradle Hymn,” he makes the mother say:
Holy angels guard thy bed.”
You probably know the beautiful Irish superstition that when a baby smiles in its sleep the angels are whispering to it.
“Before I became a father, I took little or no interest in babies; I rather thought them troublesome things. But the arrival of one of my own wrought a great change in me. It enlarged at once my views and my heart, and I had higher and stronger motives to exertion. My interest in them has not yet begun to weaken, and I have no reason to think it ever will.”
Girls are differently constituted from boys. God makes the intellect predominate in males, and affection in females. Accordingly, a little girl early shows a love for a doll, regarding it quite as her baby and never taking into account that it is not alive. She has many of a mother's cares and anxieties, as well as pleasures, about it; indeed, as many as she is then capable of. It is a constant source of amusement and employment to her. In all this we may plainly see the hand of Providence.
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