What a Young Wife Ought to KnowDrake, Emma F. Angell (Emma Frances Angell)
Science
What a Young Wife Ought to Know
Drake, Emma F. Angell (Emma Frances Angell)
Infants -- Care; Marriage; Women -- Health and hygiene
If you have not learned about the necessity of good ventilation in the
home, learn it at once, and let in daily the fresh, pure, life-giving
sunshine and fresh air, room-fulls of it. Do not be afraid of adding to
the fuel bill, for warm air charged with poison will heat less easily
than pure, cold air which invites the warmth. Have plenty of fresh
air in your sleeping rooms, for it is quite necessary to your rising
clear-brained and sweet-tempered; and never forget that you will be
largely responsible for the mental and moral atmosphere of the home.
Be careful and guarded as to your society demands, lest they steal your
time and strength, and you be unfitted for the real duties of your home.
Home _must_ hereafter _always_ be to you first and foremost in your heart
and duty, if you fill your position truly.
Be not misled by the false philosophy of the day, that tends in many
instances to underrate the home and its high blessedness in the life of
woman.
An Eastern proverb tells us that, “The house rests upon the mother.” Just
as soon as you take upon yourself the vows that make you wife, you become
the mother of a home. Whether children ever come to bless it or not, you
are its mother. Yet few women appreciate the importance or power of this
position. With the grain of truth there is in it, there is a great deal
of wasteful talk about woman, and her narrow sphere. Even though she be
tied to the home and the little ones, yet her sphere is just as wide as
she has a mind to make it. Four walls cannot shut in a large-hearted,
loving woman. From the home blessed by her presence goes out a stream of
mighty influence.
Put into a woman’s sphere all the depth and sweetness, and wisdom, and
comfort, that the words, love, home, mother and children comprehend,
and dare to call her sphere narrow if you will! To me it is so wide
that I have seen few women who make themselves large enough to fill it,
and these few are not found among those who talk of its narrowness and
drudgery. The light of the home, the beacon for the husband, the teacher
and guide for little feet, the sharer in all the secrets and joys, the
consoler in all sorrows—how do the little annoyances and patience-trying
cares dwindle into insignificance, when compared with these. What in
public life can win her from a life like this, if she have it to do?
Thoughtlessly many young wives get into the society drift before they
know it, and their best strength is wasted, and they are laying the
foundations for a young old age. Nervously overwrought, hysteria comes in
with its train of multitudinous ills, and destroys both her comfort and
that of the home.
On the other hand do not go to the opposite extreme, which many young
people in the first days of their married happiness selfishly fall into,
namely, avoiding society altogether. Once out of the pleasant, social
round of friends it is hard to regain your lost footing, and you fret
under it that your old friends are so cold and indifferent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account