True Men as We Need Them

Fr. Bernard O’Reilly had spent years educating the young in America and had been a missionary in the backwoods of Canada before he wrote this book in 1878. He came out of all that convinced that when a home goes wrong, the fault is nearly always the man’s, and he wrote this for laymen, from the day laborer to the judge, to say plainly what he expected of them.

More than half the book is about the home. He sets out what a husband owes his wife from the wedding day on, what drink and the club do to a house, what a father is for and how closely his boys watch him, how to choose a wife and how to be worth choosing. Then he follows the man out the door, with chapters for the lawyer, the doctor, the journalist, the businessman, and the laboring man.

He argues from cases, and the cases are what stay with you: the lawyer who married a pretty, silly girl after a month’s acquaintance and spent years quietly teaching her to keep a house; the mechanic whose ruin began with a toast or two at the club his workmates talked him into joining; the boy of ten with an ungovernable temper who kept a notebook of his victories and defeats over it, and after the first three days had nothing to write on the losing side. The tone is warm, and it does not flatter. O’Reilly expects a great deal of a man, and he says so.