HOW TO TREAT WIVES AND CHILDREN.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2325, 19 June 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

HOW TO TREAT WIVES AND CHILDREN.

Sam Jones, of Georgia, the wellknown revivalist, thus discources cn the treatment of wives by husbands, and vice versa " It is ten thousand times harder to be just than generous. It is easy enough to give a poor woman a dollar, but when it comes to follow a straight line, being just in all things, just to God, to your friends, to your children, to all men, it is a different thing. Some men are never just to their wives. They pay their cook five dollars very willingly on Saturday

night, but when the hard-working, economical, pains-taking wife asks for a little money on Monday,. the brute will say : " Oh, wife, what do you want with money ?"

i knew a fellow in Georgia who had been married ten years. His wife suggested that that was her birthday, and he said tohimsfelf, ' I've got a good wife ; she has been kind, self-sacrific-ing, and true in "all respects; I must buy her a present-.' So he went down town that day and walked into a hat store, and bought himself a new hat, consoling himself that nothing more would please a good wife than to make her husband a present of a new hat. He's the meanest man I ever saw, and there are a great many men . just that way. '

" We are often unjust to our children, exacting of them things which we don't do ourselves, and berating them with our tongues when they don't understand what we want. And then we are too mean to say ten words to make one of them happy. Qh, how unjust we are to wives, husbands, children.

"If you'll put a little downright justice in your conduct to your children you'll have happier, hoines. Did you ever start anywhere with your wife, and keep hurrying her up, when you ought to know that she has not only to dress herself, but five others besides, while you have nothing to do but to get ready 1 'Hurry up, hurry up; 1 don't want to be; late! If you don't hurry up J'll go by myself.' And after a while she tells vou, il Go on, husband I'm afraid I can't get ready in time ; I don't want to hinder yon.' " I've done just that way. I have walked off, out of the sjate, and fit'y yards down the road, arid then I'd slop and think. I'd say : ' Sain Jones, you are the meanest man living, and you shan't go to church nor anywhere e'se till you learn how to hehave yourseif.' And then I walk back and go in and find worry in my wife's face and tears in her eyes, and Igo up and put my arms around her and kiss her —there's nobody there but us two—and say. ' Wife, I'm just as mean as a dog ; I know I am, and I want you to forgive* me, ( and she torgives me, and we get ready and go—and find ourselves the first ones there.

" The Lord have mercy on us ; how urt]ust we are to our wives, our children, our brothers and sisters, and our neighbors. " There are men in this town who meet a neighbor's wife on the street, and take ofi their hats and bow, and smile so sweet and tenderly,'' How are you madam f and then go home and wound their own wives with their tongues. Ciever to all wifes but their own. And so it is with some wives. They are all smiles and kind words in company, and cut their husbands to the heart with their tongues. God pity the man who has such a wife as that. " I don't scold. If I do, I intend to scold somebody else's wife. I' have heard mothers nay when a neighbor's child would break some article of value— ! Oh, it doesn't matter,' when, if their own child were to do it, they would slap him clean across the room. Lord, give us- a religion that will make us good wives and children and friends and neighbors. —Selected.