I Read for You... (How to Help Your Husband)

The home is the starting point of social life: it is the cause of failure and of eminence, and the more successful it is, the more the nation strives toward the heights. This is what has led scientists and researchers to place the study of its affairs above every other problem!

This is a study summarized from the book 'How to Help Your Husband' by Mrs. Dale Carnegie, containing the fruit of the experience and reflection of the aware wife. Some time ago a friend visited us on whom the marks of misery and wretchedness showed, and he burst out: 'I don't know what to do. For the past six months I have been working beyond my strength, coming home at a late hour of the night, and this depresses my wife, since I take no meals with her and do not go out in her company on visits; and although we are in urgent need of this extra work, I feel no peace of mind, because she does not know the truth of the present situation.'

Such periods do not please us women; but we must not forget our mission — building the character of the rising generation with patience, and getting through the difficult steps with deliberation, hoping for relief, while the man is absorbed only in the work at hand. Occupy your thoughts with what will spare you comparing past with present, and try to cut yourself a path in society. Of course there remain places you may not visit except in your husband's company, but society is forever crying out for help, so let your hand be a voice from on high. And if you long to add to your learning, or to read, here is the golden opportunity — seize it, remembering that this is a summer cloud that will pass away; and thus you keep him from brooding over your loneliness.

If you are a working lady, are you prepared to give up your position to please your husband? Helping him get ahead is a task that calls for all your attention — but I am afraid you may misunderstand me here. I encourage a woman to work if she must, and to arm herself against the accidents of fate; but whatever a man's position in business, his advancement depends on the wife's tact in her social conduct. If you lack certain of the social graces — tact and pliancy — you must strive to acquire them; and be sure that the leaders of tomorrow's intellectual and practical movements are the obscure young men of today, for no one begins at the top. So hasten to help your husband, and learn how to respect and love everyone around you.

Keeping friends is the road by which your companion will rise tomorrow — so beware of too much criticism! A friend told me that his wife was the cause of his failure: he started a small business that did not fill her eye, and she would greet him with biting sarcasm of this kind: 'How is the great business doing? You understand, of course, that we are running at a loss...' And today he has become governor of one of the states and enjoys a distinguished post — after leaving the wife, naturally. Here are some directions you may profit by:

First: Train yourself not to repeat something you have said once. If you choose to remind your husband six times of some promise, he will not keep it, and he will stop his ears against the sound of your voice.

Second: Try to use gentler words to win him over — for instance, telling him: 'If you keep your promise today, I will make you your favorite pastries.'

Third: Learn the art of the joke, which helps in many a situation.

Fourth: Discuss the important problems with him calmly, and try writing on a slip of paper everything that upsets you, without reacting; then, when the atmosphere has cleared, you will find yourself ashamed of these trifles, and it will not be long before you tear up the paper. A thinker, when I asked him how a woman can help her husband, answered me: 'By loving him, and by not meddling in his business affairs.' The loving wife does her utmost to give her man love and stability in the home. And here are means by which you can drag a man down: be sour-faced with his office secretary — and in losing her, he may lose his success; telephone him at his office several times; tell him about your quarrel with the maid; and then do not forget to load him, on his way home, with all the kitchen supplies. Convince him that his work does not pay him what he is worth and that no one appreciates him — naturally he will begin to believe you, and the effect of it will show in his work. Multiply the banquets and the expenses, and draw all eyes to yourself at every opportunity; then weep whenever he means to undertake a piece of work or a journey, and let him feel that you come first.

To help our men we must stand beside them in difficulties, and hearten them in

tight places. A man once wrote on his wife's grave this sentence: 'She was a capable woman.' I do not know what effect that may have on you; only, I never think of the husband who carved those words without imagining him passing in review the sweet memories he had with her: her radiant smile at his homecoming, the table ready, her laughter at his jokes, the home that enfolded him in warmth and love... Sacrifice and self-denial are the secret of married happiness, together with sharing — and it makes no difference whether it be a piece of bread or a precious thought, for it brings closer those we love, and this closeness is the spiritual paradise of life.

A man expects to find rest in his home after the labor of the day, so you must be a housewife in the full sense of the word; and know that your extreme zeal for tidying and cleaning while he is present annoys him greatly... A person inclines, in his life, to appear in the character you clothe him in: if you tell a child, 'You are a coward,' he will soon prove it to you. Always treat your man on the footing of superiority and success, and you will see that the result pleases you. And remember, finally, that his life is in your hands: watch over his food and his health — this is the most sacred of the duties you perform.

Now that you have followed this serious study, which has absorbed your thoughts, Madam, I shall offer you this moral in a short story from Pageant magazine. It happened in a bank, where a lady with her three-year-old boy was changing some money, when she suddenly became aware of screaming inside the steel vault, which her child had locked from within. The bystanders gathered in confusion — the child was close to suffocating — and the bank manager shouted: 'Take off the vault door so the boy can breathe!' But the mother came near calmly and said: 'Sammy, wouldn't you like to come to Mama?' He answered her with a sigh: 'Yes, Mama!' 'Good — turn the key and come out.' The boy obeyed, and a moment later he was in his mother's arms... Is this not the case with many of us here? It is easy to lock ourselves inside a vault of fear and pessimism, and then find ourselves unable to get out; but our faith in God and our confidence in ourselves enable us to turn the key — and go free!...