PUTTING HIS FOOT DOWN

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1990, 21 February 1914, Page 11

PUTTING HIS FOOT DOWN

THE SHAM TYRANT OF'THE HOUSEHOLD. Are you married—you wives, young or old, who may read those lines—are you married, I ask, to a husband with a foot or a husband without ono? Should you reply, with wifely indignation, "My husband has two feet, I hope, liko other people I" I can only say that. I am even more sorry for you than for myself. And that is saying a good dealU , For I find that my husband's single foot,,the foot he "puts down" .so effectively and irrevocably on some of my dearest and innocentest plans and impulses and on many of the yet more innocent plans of our children, has assumed a size out of all proportion to tho bodily member it once represented. This figurative foot of his governs the house far more strictly than the proverbial rod of iron. . . . . . No; on second thoughts I am not sure that that statement is exact. It is more, correct to say that tho owner of tho foot thinks he governs the household; he thinks his word ie tho last in every discussion, and that his judgment: cannot bo in error. Well—and what does his wife think r What does any woman of average intelligence think in such a case?; Does she not know perfectly well that she has been endowed with common sense in order that it may be used; that there are questions—nursery questions, domestic questions, economic questions— eo entirely within her specijil field of observation that the man.who attempts to blunder into their sphere only makes himself ridiculous? What She Can Do. And so, in the home of the mail who takes it upon himself to settle every difficulty' offhand, by ■pompously and ponderously "putting down his f oot," . one of-two results must always ensue. ; . Either his wife will perceive the danger of allowing the "foot policy" to reign unchecked and will assert hetaelr when she-thinks fit, or—- . The woman's mind will find means to