HOW TO MANAGE HUSBANDS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, 2 May 1891, Page 4

HOW TO MANAGE HUSBANDS.

■■■ "How to manage husbands?" said Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, the authoress of "Little Lord Fauntleroy." "You mean how to manage them to make them happy ? In my judgment, no man or woman, married or single, can be made happy by others. Others may afford us opportunities of being happy, bat no one can compel us to ba happy whether we will or not. Our happiness or unhappiness must ever depend largely upon ourselves, let our surroundings and our companions be what they may. You remember Mark Tapley in Dickens's novel of • Martin Chuzzlewit ?' You know his great object in life was to be 'jolly, 1 as he called it, under adverse circumstances, and he sought diligently to place himself in the most depressing situation possible in order to prove that a man may be contented and happy in any condition if he only will. "In married life, as in everything else in this world, there is everything in beginning right, and the very beginning is when the young man and the young wonjjyi who are to compose the future married couple receive their first training in early childhood. In most of the cases where marriage has proved a failure, a close investigation will show that the husband or wife — perhaps both — have never received a proper business or domestic training, and each has relied on theother to make him or her happy. This notion, in itself, is fatal to happiness. The man or woman who sits down and waits to be made happy by their conjugal partner, and becomes angry with the said partner because he or she does not manufacture the required amount of happiness, will in a short time declare marriage a failure, and perhaps seek relief in one of those divorces which may now be so easily obtained without publicity. "A girl whose natural domestic tastss have been carefully cbveloped. anj w'.\ > h i.s otherwise been properly trained, will hive very little trouble in making a homo w!i it it Should be, and one oi the greatsst of all points in managing a husband is to in ike home the most attractive of all places to him. ' "A good story is told of two brothers-in-law, one rich, the other poor, meetiiv after alongsepatation. " 'How do you spsnd your ovenin ;s ?' asked the poor man. 11 • Oh, at the club," was the response. "• At the club !' exclaimed the poor man in a tone of deep commiseration. ' That's not like home, is it?' •' • No, indeed, it is not, thank heaven ! If it were I should never go.' "There are countless men like him who seek the club as a relief from home because their wives do not know, how to manage husbands by making home attractive,"