PERFECT HUSBAND.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 127, 31 December 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

PERFECT HUSBAND.

WHAT THE MARRIED MEN SAY.

A Brooklyn woman recently advertised for a husband, stipulating that applicants must be of the perfect kind. Charles VV. Wood interviewed a number of husbands with regard to the advertisement. Thef ruit of his labours appears in the 'New York World.' Following are some of the replies he received :

"Are you a perfect husband, and why not?" I asked. "I am not," was tn© first answer, from a comfortable citizen of midlde age, who has a reputation in his neighbourhood of being a model. "We've been married fifteen years now and I guess few couples are happier. We own our home and like it. We never quarrelled. I've kept out of debt and out of jail, bulk we're not wildly joyful. " Wife and 1 both know we're missing something. Sure, we love each other; but we don't exactly need each other, the way a fellow needs a wife after he's made a wholesale wreck of everything and been arrested. Guess a woman naturally resents it if she isn't given an opportunity to sacrifice herself about once every so often. If I had my life to live over again I think I'd rob a bank or kill somebody, and not cheat Helen out of woman's great perogative." WOMEN HATE INDIFFERENCE. "My husband isn't the least bit jealous," a charming young wife told me So I immediately looked him up. £ think I'd suit exactly," he said, ,f if I could only be jealous. But I'm one of those chaps who like to see people enjoying themselves. My wife, for instance, likes to dance, and I coird never learn. Naturally I want her to dance, and there's the rub. She can't help feeling that I'm indifferentr—and a woman can stand anything but that. Of course she wouldn't want me to 8 top her from dancing, but she thinks I ought to be decent enough to try." The view was amply corroborated by a husband who, according to his spouse, "has never spoken a cross word' einco they were married. "It's almost a tragedy to Dora," bo explained, "but I can't help it. If I could only get good and mad at her once I know 6he'd be happy. Letting a woman have her own way oisgbt to be recognised in the statul* as extreme cruelty. Beat her, swear at her, shoot her—and she'll know you love her. Treating her like a friend fa an unforgiveablc insult." WHAT A WOMAN MARRIES xOR. "No, I am not a perfect husband yet, said a corner grocer who had been husbanding for twenty-two years. " There are one or two transformations which remain to be accomplished. The perfect husband is the one who is completely changed from the being he was when he went to the altar. A man marries a woman for what she is. A woman marries a man for what she can turn him into; not necessarily to make him good, but to make him afferent, to change his taste in everything from whiskers to idealsi. "For the first ten or fifteen years he's apt to chafe under the reconstruction, but if he has it in him to be a perfect husband, he'll get over that. By and by he gets so he depends on her to make him over every day, just as he depends on her to get out his clean linen and his necktie, eocks, and collar buttons. This is straight stuff Im handing out and it's the only way to make a go of marriage. If you get married in order to go on being what you were before, you're in for trouble. It may hit our fancies, but »t amt natural. WOMAN LEVELS US DOWN. "Nature don't want us to follow our own sweet wills to far, or we'd all get so different that We couldnt live in the same town with each other. Its woman's place to head us the other way, sort of level us down and keep society together. . . "If you're an extremist in any way, she'll tone you down, and if you're already toned down, she'll tone you up. If you're happy she'll give you your share of misery, and if you're miserable she'll give you your share of joy. bhe makes tramps i>ut of financiers and financiers out of tramps, drives drunkBids to salvation and Salvationists to drink. , , " It's her business to make good men out of bad oney and bad men out ot <rood ones, poets out of husbands anc/. husbands out of poets. If she didn t do it we might have Heaven and hell but there'd be no living on earth. »he inav never turn us into perfect husbands but she'll see to it that we don t become either perfect angels or perfect devik."'