HALF A LOAF—OR NO BREAD?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 378, 12 June 1928, Page 5

HALF A LOAF—OR NO BREAD?

WISDOM FOR WIVES The cultivation of ■wider individual i interests notwithstanding, feminine j affections are still too insistent on the possessive case. “Mine” is a word that still looms too largely in the feminine vocabulary. We still stretch forth too many tentacles of overweening egoism that is misnamed “love.” I Matrimonial tentacles in particular. We have yet to realise that, in the marriage relationship, even more than in any other, the gifts of self that are made to us by a separate entity must be voluntary if they are to be of worth. Here, less than anywhere, can coercion—however subtle —be the way of ultimate content. Time, interest, affection, must be accorded with no faintest sense of irk. Otherwise the offering is no longer a happy gift, line in the giving and the taking, but a burdensome and humiliating toll. Too many wives stand at the matrimonial toll-gate with frowning brows and grasping hands. Not to claim extravagant material bounty, but an excess of those more ephemeral donations that are valueless unless spontaneous and sincere. Too many wives still fail to face the fact that it is useless to attempt to exact, from the masculine heart and soul and mind, one iota more than it is prepared to give of its own free will. In the abortive attempt to veil coercion as “coaxing,” many a wife has sacrified a lifetime of adult philosophical well-being !to the temporary gratification of immature emotional greed.

The exigencies of the feminine possessive instinct may flatter a man’s vanity for a little while. But very soon its repeated manifestations appal him. And outraged masculine liberty makes short work of exorbitant feminine demands.

A first lesson that must be learned by wives incapable of other than matrimonial content is that half a loaf is better than no bread. Unless they are prepared to act upon that elementary maxim, they cannot hope to win through to the profounder knowledge that results from such acceptance of the inevitable, and brings in its train the vanity, the humour, and the sweet and smiling reasonableness which alone can make marriage safe for feminine autocracy. Because husbands, whose conception of life-happi-ness stretches far beyond the hearthstone, are seldom if ever prepared to bring more than the half-loaf of a cosmopolitan entity to the home-mak-ing mill. The wise wife takes the grist without grizzles. E.V.

To keep the stove bright, snake together in a bottle equal parts of boiled linseed oil, kerosene and vinegar. Give a daily rub with a rag soaked in the mixture.