POCKET BOOK FOR TWO.

White Ribbon, Volume 21, Issue 248, 18 February 1916, Page 11

POCKET BOOK FOR TWO.

(“Ladies’ Home Journal.”) If 1 had been asked to take a hand in putting the marriage service together, I have a fairly good idea that one clause would read like this: “With all my worldly goods and an allowance of so much a week” (amount stated in marriage certificate) “1 thee endow.” I’m getting extremely weary of the way in which matrimonial finances are too often managed. 1 didn’t know so much about it before I was a minister’s wife. It was when I was still very new to the profession of a parsonage that I was chairman of a church supper committee. We were raising money for repairs on the church. We were planning the ’steenth church meal of the season. I looked at the tired, nervous, listless women, and thought of the tremendous and profitless task of planning, preparing, and serving another supper.

“Let’s each give a dollar,” I said. “Just a dollar. It will amount to more than we could make from the. supper. We give far more than that in time and nerves, and even money, every time we have something at the church.” Many of them heartily favoured the idea. But others looked troubled, and argued in favour of the supper; and presently it was decided to have it. It was a good mother in Israel who set me right. “You see, dear,” she explained, ‘there’s lots of women in our church —in all the churches —who haven’t a cent they can call their own. And it wouldn’t be any use to ask them for a dollar right out. We tried it once, and one of the richest women in the place just had to own up that her husband wouldn’t let her have a dollar for the women’s society, though he was willing she should

work at the church as hard as anyone else.” To me it’s a constant amusement and amazement to see a skittish girl shy at the word “obey” in the marriage service, though she’s fearlessly willing to promise to “love, honour, and cherish.” As if to love, honour, and cherish might not be a thousand times more difficult than to obey ! As if where one truly loved, honoured and cherished “obey” would not follow unnoticed, as a matter of course! I think that the love-honour-and-cherish clause of the marriage service gets its first real jolt when the wife has to ask her husband for that share of the income which should have been hers without question. Ido pity her so when she has to humble herself to ask for money!

Maybe they haven’t kept a maid, and she’s been cheerfully, carefully, patiently doing the work of the little household, and has thereby earned — or saved, whichever way you look at it —an amount, varying with the locality, of from twelve to twenty dollars a month and upward. He would have paid the girl’s wages without question, though her work were not half so well done. Why does the woman he loves, honours and cherishes, the woman he has endowed with all his worldly goods, have to beg for the money she has rightfully earned? If his wife was one of the vast army of breadwinners before she was married, if she knew the satisfaction of earning her money and spending it as seemed best, can you not see how intolerable it is that she should have to come to him now and say: “I’n afraid I’ll have to ask for a little money, dear. I need a few things” ? And he says, pleasantly enough, but ; n surprise: “Why, what have you done with the money I gave you last week?” There it is! Wouldn’t you like to see him ask the hired girl what >hhad done with the money he’d paid

her? Wouldn’t he be at the unintelligence office very soon afterward? But it is well understood that to get up at five-thirty six mornings in the week, to feed the hens, and get tfie breakfast, and bathe and dress the children, and clear the table, 'and wash the dishes, and sweep the floors, and make the beds, and dust the rooms, and wash, and iron, and cook, and sew, and mend, isn’t really labour, to be paid for at so much per. It’s only a married woman’s way of spending her time.

Now, I know a woman who does all this, except the hens (they don’t keep hens), and much more besides, for she is a great worker in the Missionary Society and the Sewing Circle. She is married to a good and upright man. She administers the affairs of her household —four children —as prudently as may be, and rinds time — heaven only knows how !—for many little deeds of kindness among her friends and neighbours. Before she was married she earned a small but regular salary, and knew the value of money. She put most of her savings into the furnishing of the new home. Then she asked her husband for a regular allowance, however small. But he demurred. “Everything I have is yours. You have but to ask. I should feel as if my wife were a servant if I paid her an allowance.” And there the matter ended. For he was as set as Gibraltar. And besides, he held the pocket-book. She was proud, but she kept her face steadfastly toward the “love, honour and cherish” of her marriage vows, and learned to beg meekly for the dollars she needed. He is proud of her thrifty ways, and when she tells him she needs money he smilingly gives her ten dollars with which to buy shoes for the boy (i dollar 75 cents), and a hat for the little girl (trimmed at home, 3 dollars), and gloves for the big girl (1 dollar), and stockings for all of t'.em

(i dollar), and a coat for the mediumsized Kiri (5 dollars), and shoes for the big Kiri (2 dollars 50 cents), and rubbers for two of them (1 dollar), and with what is left of the ten dollars madame can buy a gown and shoes and hat and veil and gloves for herself. Can’t you see how she will do it And there is that husband of hers sitting at his desk with that generous, complacent I’ve just given my wife ten dollars expression on his face ! There was a one-pocketbook man I heard of. He was a breezy, alert, hearty sort of man. Other women envied his wife when they heard his expansive way of talking about sharing alike. 1 knew his wife. If she wanted 75 cents with which to buy three yards of material for a shirt waist, she would have to go to One l’o( ketbook and explain how much she needed the shirt waist, how long it was since she had bought one, how long she hoped it would be before she needed another. And she received 75 cents, not a nickel extra for thread or.»buttons.

She could not entertain or take part in the little junketings of other women, for One Pocketbook was impatient of such demands as these. He dressed well, and spent money on his friends, and that was enough. She really didn’t enjoy wearing her long-way-from-broadcloth coat, her never-was-seal muff, and her year-before-last hat among the pretty, modis.i things of her acquaintances, so she withdie.v from all the little affairs she might have been in ; and the womt a who didn’t know accounted her a poor-spirited creature, who failed woefully to live up to her good-look-ing, popular and generous husband. His wife meanwhile was clinging hard to such fragments of the holy estate of matrimony as survived. She had learned that love would stand most anything but meanness, that she could not honour where she was not trusted, and about all she could do was to cherish the memory of what she had thought her husband was when she married him —and what was still hoped desperately he might be. Then his cousin Kllen came to visit them. She was a middle-aged woman who possessed common-sense and bifocal spectacles. She sized up the situation. When she left, much regretted by the wife, she gave her new-

found cousin ten ten-dollar bills. She said: “Now, 1 want you to spend this money for yourself. You need a lot of things, and I’ll trust you to make it go twice as far as some other woman would. Mind, it’s all for you!” Of course the husband knew of the gift. lie urged his wife to let him put the money in the bank at once. Bui she had not forgotten the time when an aunt had sent her twenty-five dollars, and he had persuaded her to let him bank the money. Then he wouldn’t hear of her dialing it out. “You don’t want to spend that money,” he said, “it’s drawing interest.” After a while she found that he had drawn it out, and much more besides, for some of his own uses. That was the time when love and honour for the man forever left her.

So she was quite firm in refusing to let him put the money in the bank, but kept it in the scallopy box in the right-hand corner of the upper lefthand drawer of the bureau. She planned at least seven different ways of spending every dollar of it. It was not long till Christmas. For the first time in her married life she was going to have real joy in selecting Christmas gifts. After that she’d buy the things she needed, and take advantage of the January sales. Then came he of the one pocketbook. Someone had a carriage to sell, good as new and scarcely used. It was just what he wanted, but he hadn’t quite enough ready money on hand to buy it. It was against his principles, as she well knew, to run in debt. Would she lend him her hun* died dollars for ju-t a few days? He had some mon >y coming in, and he’d pay her back. She hesitated for a time. Love and honour were gone, and she couldn’t help it. Then she went to the righthand corner of the upper left-hand bureau drawer, took the money out of the scallop-box under the pile of handkerchiefs, and gave it to him. The carriage came home, and he was proud of it. The wife wore her old clothes, and he was not proud of her. Christmas drew nearer, and still her hundred dollars didn’t come back to her. Once, after great effort, she asked him for a little of the money; the few gifts she had contrived out of little or nothing seemed so pitifully small.

But he put her off. In just a few days she should have her money. They had a family Christmas tree at his sister’s. When the gifts were distributed she had a little Hat parcel from her husband. “Open it, my dear, and show them what you have,” he commanded. She did so. It was a bank book, in which he had entered a hundred dollars —the money she’d lent him returned as a Christmas gift! And all his people said how generous he was, and how fortunate she was to have such a husband! But when 1 think of that man straightway an old hymn comes into my head. It begins: My thoughts on awful subjects roll, Damnation and the dead. And for the life of me I can’t seem to get beyond the first word of the second line. There I stick. Ah! you don’t know what stories come to the ears of the minister’s wife! And there are more unhappy marriages—even divorces—which arise from an unfair division of the family income than you have any idea of. Maybe we can’t do much with the men who think their wives unfit to be trusted with money, but before you, my dear boy, promise to endow her with all your worldly goods, just have a plain, straightforward talk of income and household expenses, and the allowance for personal expenses you mean to make the dear girl. Have it now. Have it understood, and save years of tears, or years of unhappiness, hereafter.