THE BEST HUSBANDS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 February 1922, Page 10

THE BEST HUSBANDS.

OCCUPATAION NO GUIDE. ■ <1 ■ (By A Batchelor.) - There are not to my knowledge any available statistics from which one can say with certainty whether married bliss depends on the husband’s occupation in life. The subject came for discussion in a company composed of about a dozen men and women, and while one or tw-o maintained that a husband’s calling had nothing to do with the success of marriage, the general opinion appeared to be that it was a factor of very great importance.

One woman went so far as to draw up an order of merit, as follows: (1) Naval men, (2) doctors with good practices, (3) commercial travelleirs, (4) explorers (a small class).

At the very bottom of the list she placed university professors, actors, clergymen, and men of no occupation. The lady’s own husband was a person of independent means who spent most of his time at home; and it appeared that her criterion of a husband’s quality was the length of time during which he was deprived of his wife’s society. This criterion of itself, however, hardly accounts -for the position of actors in the list.

Assuming that all married couples start with the same advantages, it is perhaps broadly true that the husband’s absences and homecomings tend to prolong and intensify domestic love. As a fearful but wise young woman once observed, “it is terrible to contemplate pouring out tea fop the same face every morning for 40 years.” Yet the happiest couple I ever knew were a clergyman and his wife who had brought up a family of nine and during 30 years of marriage were never absent from each other for more than 4S consecutive hours.

Light-keepers make good husbands. I have known a dozen of them, every one happy in his marriage. They spend six weeks on a rock and (weather permitting) a fortnight ashore with their families. These fortnights are like recurring honeymoons.

Farmers, on the other hand, who are never far from home, make easy and comfortable husbands even where marriage was not preceded by courtship or even acquaintance.

Frequently in the British Islands a young farmer's marriage is arranged over his head by parents or “matchmakers.” It is- a union of property rather than o-f persons; and I know of two instances where bride and groom met for the first time in church on the wedding morning. Yet both were successful.

A farmer and his wife are usually working partners. And it suggests that when husband and wife have a common interest the husband’s occupation may not matter. At any rate, it is better than matrimonial “rest cures” and deliberate absences.