Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/135

 perfect female Lucifer, sharp as vinegar, crooked as a worm, and meaner than "git;" yet the woman had a husband to whom she is sweeter than strained honey, and she to him is goddess; such love as exists between termagant shrew and this invalid husband scarce ever is seen, and yet there is not the slightest vestige of affinity between the twain. How, then, is this happy union to be accounted for? Wait, presently we shall inquire and perhaps see. Let us look at the female side of the business first, and see if it is true, as the 876th Rosicrucian canon declares, that a husband is ever just what a wife makes him. Some may doubt this, but I believe it most astonishingly true.

Marriage is a tree whose fruits are ever bitter unless constantly watered with respect, cultured with tenderness, and nursed with attention, for happiness is either a vanishing or accreting quantity. Now how many wives in a thousand ever practically realize that, the husband sustains a relation close by the walls of their lives — that he wishes the closest possible union. Very few wives take the same pains to please " only my husband" that they do strangers, acquaintances, and a host of outsiders, — for all of whom they put on the very best airs, give them the tit-bits at table, wash, perfume, and dress themselves "fit to kill," and come it strong in a hundred ways, all of which they are oblivious to so far as hubby is concerned. Take their tale for it, and all the wives are angels. Madame puts her best foot foremost, and honey is all the go, but after that, she seems to think her part well done if she ministers at meals and suffers "animality." Now be it known that no man lives who will be contented with the mere physical part of the contract. Women doubt it, but it is a fact we "animal monsters" actually have hearts, and love sweetness, — saccharine, domestic, aesthetic, and magnetic; and if the lovely creatures would take half the pains to keep and increase our love, by commanding our respect, attention, and tenderness, there would be far fewer divorce suits and smaller editions of Bedlam let loose; for it happens that when men don't get these things at home, a streak of human nature prompts a search elsewhere.

Behold the foundation whereon saloons, brothels, rum-drinking, tobacco-using, crime from badly fashioned children, divorce courts, elopements, desertions, murder, and the gallows are builded! A slovenly wife drives a man mad. A cold, unthinking 9