p. 26The True Man’s Home Duties

The world which is to be to you a fairy-land where all is perpetual spring and unclouded sunshine to the soul, is your own home, as you make it; it will be the ever-present image and foretaste of that other land where joy is none, nor peace, nor love, nor hope, if you fail to fulfill these sacred home-duties which are to you the law of life. Where there is self-caused misery within the home, there can be, for any man who has the fear of God, but little happiness or enjoyment in the wide world outside. To a husband and a father, with a home still left to him, the roses with which pleasure would crown him outside of it, would be a crown of piercing thorns, the laurels bound round his brow would seem a diadem of flame, and the most delicious fruits of the world’s banquet would turn to ashes and bitterness in his mouth. God, who ordained the home-virtues as the foundation of the moral world, owes it to himself and to us, that no father of a family shall find solid happiness or lasting honor anywhere else than by the side of his wife, in the midst of his children, and beneath the roof which the divine blessing has hallowed as his home. If he has won her love, their reverence, and the admiration of the outside world, the wreath that she will weave for him will seem dearer and more enviable than the diadem of kings, the caresses of his children sweeter than the enthusiastic applause of multitudes, and the meal spread forth by love on his own table, more delicious than the viands of the gods.

How many homes have we not seen among the laboring poor where the simple, and often the scanty, fare, seasoned by contentment and true love and a good conscience, was, in very truth, a foretaste of the banquet of heaven! How truly were the mutual affection and the delight in each other that welled up in these pure, simple, brave hearts, the magnificent reward of Him whose ecstatic presence even in this life overflows hearts unoccupied by worldly affections, as the rising tide fills with its rushing waters the bare bays and creeks of the seaboard!

Learn we then to “make the world we live in,” “to dress and to keep” the paradise, “the garden of delights” we call our home. In that twofold labor the Divine Author of man’s being would not have him to be alone: He gives the man of the world a companion, a helpmate, a friend, dear, devoted, and to be cherished beyond all that is not God. The true man’s first duty, after God, is to his wife.

Conjugal Love the great creative and conservative Force in the Home

Since the days of Adam and Eve there has been a great outcry against the latter, as if she were the sole or most guilty cause of that primal offense which lost our race the earthly paradise. It is certain that our first father, who had been weak enough to listen to the tempting voice of his companion, was also unmanly enough to throw the whole blame of his own guilt upon her. Ever since, the descendants of this unhappy pair have been divided as to the proper share of husband and wife in the ruin and misery of homes from which God’s blessing had been banished. When a home is blessed with peace, and order, and love, and prosperity, there never is any dispute about the relative merit of the parents. It may be taken for certain that both have lovingly labored “to dress and keep” their sweet garden from the approach of evil.

To secure this harmony of action, and the union of hearts from which it flows, all the religious helps instituted by the Creator from the beginning, and afterward perfected by Christ, are intended. There can be in the home neither happiness, nor peace, nor prosperity, nor the blessing of children growing up in the fear of God, nor the respect of friends or neighbors, without this deep, true, holy, and lasting love of husband for wife and of wife for husband. We are not treating here of the qualities which young people, while yet they are free, should consider in the life-companions they are about to unite to themselves in matrimony. We suppose the marriage to be an accomplished fact, and are solely concerned, at the present moment, with the necessity and the means of preserving, fostering, increasing, and perfecting that union of two souls devoted eternally to each other, without which the married state is likely to be little else than a life-long bondage, and with which it is certain to be a life-long joy, even when the path to be trodden lies through hardship and struggle.

The Husband’s distinctive Part in the joint work

Manly hearts would not believe us or forgive us, were we not to declare at the outset, that the task of the husband, as the head of the family and the stronger by nature, consists in doing all that devoted love can do to cherish the God-given treasure of a true wifely heart.

To cherish the Love of a Perfect Woman

Let us discuss the only two suppositions to be admitted here:—of a virgin heart kept by God’s angels for the destined husband, like a gem of incomparable beauty and price hidden away and locked up by a king for the bridal day of his son and heir;—or of a heart either unloving, or occupied with the love of another.

In the first case, and presuming the husband to be the Christian man that he ought to be, governed by conscience, and seeking in his choice of a companion the fulfillment of the divine pleasure,—then is the treasure of love bestowed on him by the great sacrament of matrimony, exactly described in the beautiful sentiments attributed by a modern poet to old Catholic Portugal:

Catholic moralists teach,—and it is the sentiment of the Church,—that just as men are divinely destined and called to the priesthood, and the life of higher perfection under religious rule, even so are they destined and called to the married state. In each of these conditions true holiness of life may be attained,—nay, it is the will of Him for whose glory all conditions of life are bound to labor, that the man of the world should be spotless and perfect in his state, as much as the priest in his sacred station, or the monk in his cloister. And to enable each one to fulfill the end of his proper vocation, our Father and God has set apart for every one of us an ever-present and ever-ready storehouse of graces, out of which the divine hand daily and hourly, all through life, bestows on each a measure limited only by the recipient’s own previous generosity in the use of the heavenly gift.

Of the graces thus prepared for the use of every man assuming the responsible duties of wedded life, the greatest is the undivided love of a true woman. To the gift which such a one bestows on you, in putting her hand in yours at the altar, what is there on earth to be compared in value? You, too, can say with the supposed lover of the land of St. Elizabeth:

Guilt and Folly of not Prizing such a Gift

Yes, this is more than a royal gift. For at royal bridals, though the East and the West may have been ransacked for the jewels which the bridegroom bestows on his bride, what are they to the love which does not go with them, or which, when bestowed, is above all the gems that earth and ocean can yield?

Do men, even when most assured of possessing this treasure, act as if they prized it at its worth? Do they, from their bridal day and ever after, make it their duty, a most sacred duty to God and to their dear companion, to study to cherish and increase this love in the tender and sensitive heart of the woman they have chosen from out all womankind? There are so many men, and they calling themselves Christian men, who, once married, seem to think that they may feel secure of their companion’s love, and that no neglect of theirs, no lack of manly virtue, can lose them the love of that heart so trustfully given to them.

Experience is there, however,—a sad and often tragic experience, to prove all too eloquently how a husband’s neglect chills and blights the healthiest growth of wifely affection, how the betrayal of unmanly weaknesses soon shatters the ideal young love had been worshiping, and how ill-usage but too often converts the deepest and purest conjugal devotion into a hatred still deeper and undying.

Hallowed mutual Love all-powerful for good

Love is the mightiest force of the moral world, all-mighty for good when directed toward the august purposes ordained by Him who is the Creator both of the world of spirits and of the world of matter, and who delights in aiding the workings of the human heart much more than in controlling the winds and the waves, the play of the lightning or the pathways of the light, much more even than in regulating the vast and mysterious movements of the starry universe. There never yet existed two young hearts kept pure for each other by the Great Author of our nature, and united for life-long companionship through the most ancient and sacred of His ordinances, whom He did not destine to be to each other a source of purest bliss, a mutual power toward all excellence, and the parents of a race of Godlike men and women, if they would themselves only be faithful to the light that is in them!

Here lies the secret of so much sin and misery, of so many scandals among every class of society, of the ruin of so many homes and the breaking of so many hearts. The mighty force of lawful love, is placed, like every other most precious gift of God to man, in the keeping and under the control of man’s free will. He is left free by his Maker, to use the gift or neglect it, to apply it to the divinest purposes or to pervert it to the worst.

Man has but a limited control of the mighty elementary forces of nature. The storms which sport with his best-built ships on the ocean, the inundations which yearly devastate his fields and wreck his habitation, the earthquake-power that levels the proudest cities in the twinkling of an eye, and ingulfs whole continents in the deep, the very fire given him for so many useful and salutary ends, all show him continually that he is not their master. Nay, more than that, the very steam which he generates and utilizes as the agent of his most triumphant progress, annihilates him at every turn, as if to convince him that his most glorious conquests can never be achieved over elements that he was not born to subdue.

The strength of man and his chiefest glory lie in his mastery over his own soul, and in his power of binding to himself the souls of others. His worst sin consists in the neglect of subduing his own evil passions, of cultivating and developing the good that is in himself; in the neglect of his duties toward the souls knit to his own, given him to guard from evil, to advance in all good, to love as God has loved us, by continual devotion and self-sacrifice in favor of the beloved.

Man responsible for the Fall in Eden

The story of the two first human beings ought to be a lesson full of warning and most wholesome instruction for every human pair, who start in life together under the sanction of God’s blessing. No,—Eve was not the author of the transgression that ruined human happiness and sullied human life at their very origin. Eve was not the head of the race; she was derived from Adam and created for him; we stood not or fell not in her and through her. Man was the head; in him it was decreed that the entire race should stand or fall. When the woman whom he was bound to guard and watch over far more jealously and diligently than over his beauteous domain of Paradise, fell, in great part, it may be, because he was neither diligent nor watchful in his charge over her unsuspecting innocence and comparative helplessness,—we had not yet fallen. Her sin was her own, and was not to be imputed to us. Had Adam continued innocent, then had we not forfeited the sublime rank to which in him all human nature had been elevated. He fell, tempted, to be sure, by his now guilty companion; but he fell freely, with his eyes open, with a full knowledge of the consequences of his disobedience, with a lively sense of the immense debt he owed to his Creator and Benefactor, and he fell to gratify his own sensuality. No other motive is assigned in Scripture.

His fall, utterly unjustifiable, and utterly disgraceful as it was, dragged us all down; and the ruin caused thereby required the coming down to our level in our assumed flesh and blood of that Eternal Son, through whom all things had been made, and by whom alone the ruin of all things could be repaired.

Even so now, let us not close our eyes to the luminous fact,—the ruin of the Home comes through man: woman’s baneful agency is but indirect, accidental, at the very most, secondary or subsidiary. The head of the Home is man, the head of society is man; the destroyer of the moral world is man; its restoration and salvation must be through woman.

At any rate, certain it is that at the head of the moral order here below is man; when he fails, then there follows disorder everywhere.

Is this preaching? We know not; we would fain think it is not. Yet so earnest are we under the pressure of our great conviction, that we must set the truth forth as it forces itself upon us.

Man’s Responsibility for Home-Love and Happiness

In the home of the lowliest laboring-man, to which he has just brought the woman of his choice, there is present in the force of her pure, maiden love, and in the added force of God’s grace, given to these two souls, to love each other withal and to do their life-work, a power infinite in its virtue and eternal in its duration, provided the husband understand the trust which he accepts therein, and freely use it with the divine assistance.

For, as surely as God is the Creator and Life-giver, so surely does He place his power and Himself at the disposal of that young husband for the fulfillment of his task, for the cherishing of the twin-soul wedded to him, and destined to be his helpmate in dressing and keeping their paradise. This lesson is addressed to Catholic men especially, who are not unacquainted with the doctrine of their Church on the nature of the various sacraments, and on the virtue of that mighty aid from on high toward all our good actions that we call grace.

At every instant, when that aid is vouchsafed to our mind by the light given it to see the good to be done, and to our will by the interior energy to follow where that light leads,—God himself is with the light he pours on our path and in the powerful impulse which urges the heart to go forward.

Perpetual Devotion enjoined on Young Husbands

It is His will, then, that the young husband should cherish with infinite care and tenderness that most precious flower of love, which is to be, under God, the very soul of his happiness and his power for good till his dying day. His plain duty, therefore, from that day forth, is to make “to-morrow” even more delightful to his companion than “to-day;” to make his love for her, his respect for her, his delicate and even watchful care of her, his chivalrous devotion to her (for all that is true love), like the stream, which is but a tiny ripple of water at its birth, but deepens and widens ever as it flows onward to the sea.

Listen to the soul of pure conjugal love as a Protestant supposed Catholic women to conceive it; and learn to measure your own upon its exquisite tenderness and delicacy.

We must return later to this subject, full as it is of most precious teachings,—and say at present one word about the other alternative of the young bridegroom’s lot,—that he has found, namely, in his bride anything save the ideal his love had dreamed of.

How Mental Inferiority in the Wife is Remedied

What is to be done when a husband is rudely startled from his dream of life-long companionship with a woman endowed with all the virtues and perfections his fancy had painted, to find that he is wedded to the very opposite defects or vices?

It is a terrible question to answer. And yet is it not an unfrequent one. There are but few guides of souls that have not to help a disappointed and despairing husband toward finding a practical solution to this formidable and seemingly insuperable difficulty. For non-Catholics the ready solution would be in divorce and the consequent formation of new ties. With Catholics there can be no thought of divorce. The remedy is only to be found in the sacramental grace itself, and in the heroic virtues which its unfailing efficacy enables the young husband to practice both in reforming what is deformed in his wife’s character and temper, and in raising higher in his own heart and life the level of all goodness and forbearance.

Example

In a charming series of sketches from actual life, published by a gifted American lady some thirty years ago,³3“Portraits of My Married Friends,” by Uncle Ben. is related an instance apposite to our present purpose, of what may be considered a most painful deficiency in a wife.

A young French nobleman, temporarily residing in New York, fell in love with and married a lovely Irish girl, who was simply a seamstress. He was unutterably shocked, soon after their union, to discover that his young wife, who had won and filled his heart much more even by the beauty of her soul than by the uncommon charms of her person, was absolutely destitute of all literary education. She did not know the first letters of the alphabet! That he did not find this out before marriage, was due to his very slight acquaintance with the English language, as well as to the correctness with which she spoke it and the grace and refinement of her manners, all of which she had acquired in the family of “Uncle Ben.”

This discovery, though it cast a shadow on their wedded bliss, did not estrange the husband from his innocent, beautiful, and devoted wife. He neither upbraided her with her ignorance, nor accused her of willfully deceiving him. With admirable sense he set about remedying the deficiency of his companion, and was heartily seconded by herself, she being at bottom a woman of excellent judgment and character.

To avoid the possibility of exposing her ignorance to the eyes of his friends or of the social world, he gave up all society, associated with his business connections only outside of his own home, and so far as was strictly needful. He surrounded her in their lodgings with all the elegances and luxuries that could elevate her taste, and he taught her their value. With his aid and that of her former kind mistress’s daughters, she soon learned to read and write. These imperfect beginnings filled her with unspeakable delight and a keen desire of further improvement. The gentle husband encouraged every effort, trusting to the natural talent and innate refinement of his dear one for a complete realization in time of all that he anticipated for her.

Meanwhile a daughter was born to him, who promised to be as beautiful as her mother. The latter, however, now that she had a child to rear, felt so deeply the deficiencies of her own education, that she must have been completely disheartened but for the sweet words of comfort and encouragement of her noble husband.

Alas! theirs was but a brief union. He had received a distinguished scientific training, was a graduate of the Polytechnic School of Paris, and had an active share in the construction of the Croton Aqueduct and Reservoir. A fever contracted by exposure carried him off, consoled, at his last hours, by the angelic devotion of his young wife, and the ministrations of their common faith.

It became needful that she should go to France, whither her father-in-law pressingly invited her, offering her his home as her own. But how was she to conceal from him and his aristocratic connections her humiliating ignorance of all things which a lady is supposed to know? In this extremity “Uncle Ben” and her daughters became her efficient aids. She devoted, under their care, the short interval before her departure to the study of what was most needful, her progress being proportioned to her fervor for self-improvement.

In France, she made a most favorable impression on the aged and widowed nobleman, who loved her dearly for the sake of his only son, as well as for her own. A French master was called in to teach her the language of her new home, of which she scarcely understood a word. She was filled with inexpressible terror lest he should find out her ignorance, and speak of it to the family, to the housekeeper, especially, who had hailed her arrival with any feelings but those of welcome, and who was all too anxious to humble the admired and lovely stranger. So the French master was admitted by the latter to her secret, and won over to her interests. The neighboring Convent of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart afforded her not only a much needed refuge in her bereavement, but gave her enlightened friends in the fresh troubles that beset her path.

To her kind instructresses in New York, however, she had chiefly recourse for help. They literally educated her by letter. We have her letters to them now before us, from the first to the last, and our readers would be astonished, in perusing them, to see how much was to be learned not only in the most elementary branches of education, by one who had learned nothing in childhood or girlhood, but also in the requirements of social life in the highest ranks of a great civilized country.

In less than a year she learned to speak and write French with ease. To those around her she now had the air and the manners of a lady of culture; and, in truth, her natural talents aided by her own most conscientious efforts, had produced most striking results.

At this juncture some English friends of her father-in-law were invited to spend a season with his family, and Kate was the only person there who could entertain them. Fancy the poor thing’s agony lest she should again be found out and betrayed by her visitors. Then began a new series of appeals to her New York friends for instruction on every imaginable subject, from degrees of longitude and latitude to the nature and uses of the thermometer and barometer. Nothing could daunt the intrepid learner, till she had succeeded in amassing an amount of varied information that set her at ease in every society she went into.

She was still in the summer of her beauty and grace, when her hand was solicited by a man of birth and fortune; and here we leave her, with the question: What would have become of herself and her first husband, had she not found in him that high-born sense of self-respect, which did not permit him to allow the outside world to know the secrets of his home and his heart? or, if his true love for his companion and his gentle forbearance had not encouraged and aided her to lift herself up to his level?

Difficulty of dealing with Weak Women

Bitter as must be a man’s disappointment, when he finds himself wedded for life to a woman in every way inferior to himself and to the sphere in which he moves, the deficiency, as we have just seen, can be remedied where he is kind and patient, and she is willing and eager to learn. It is a rich nature totally uncultivated or overrun by the weeds of neglect: the weeds can be plucked up, and the rich soil made to bear a glorious crop by patient and careful husbandry.

But what if the wife resemble the landes of Brittany, where there is only a few inches of arable earth, cold and wet, on the underlying granite, and where nothing but furze and barren heaths can grow? What if the soil be the cold, naked rock, or the barren sand of the wilderness?

All comparisons here, if taken in their literal sense to convey the exact truth, must mislead the reader. There is no human soul (we are not here treating of idiots) incapable of culture; and we shall see presently how the patient, industrious, and gentle skill of a true man, aided by the unfailing grace of the Creator, can work miracles in the natures that appear stricken with hopeless sterility. Nevertheless, as we must present the difficulty to the reader in its real magnitude, let us see what are these weak womanly natures out of which one might think nothing could be made, or these perverse natures, which can no more be made to bear wholesome fruit than the bramble can be made to bear figs, or the furze or heath be made sweet food for cattle.

The ancestor of an English statesman at present very prominent in European politics, warned his son, three centuries ago, in these words: “Thou shalt find there is nothing so irksome in life as a female fool.”

“Female Fools”—what they are

There are women, certainly, who can be fitly described in no other words; pretty in face, it may be, but silly, empty-headed, lazy, idle, and as incapable of serious thought and sustained exertion, as mercury is of the temper of steel. These are weak women, or the “female fools” of old Lord Burleigh.

Such women are the product of a defective education,—whether given at home by an incapable mother, or at one of these schools where girls, like nails in a nail-factory, are all made exactly after the same fashion, without regard to natural disposition or future avocations. But how happens it, that sensible men, with their eyes open, choose such companions as these?

The mistake made in the selection is but too often to be laid to the husband’s account. The headlong passion which is so apt to be caught by a handsome face, and does not stop to ask if the intellectual and moral qualities correspond to face and figure, if the practical training in all that pertains to the management of a household has not been neglected, or sacrificed to the few flimsy accomplishments acquired in a boarding school,—all this he must blame himself for. The Church is so supernaturally wise in the rules which she lays down for the guidance of young people about to contract the weighty obligations of matrimony! She will have them prepare themselves by prayer, by the reception of the Sacraments, by purity of soul, by the most sacred self-respect and modesty, to obtain the divine light on the course they are going to pursue. The fundamental and far-reaching maxim impressed upon all who are deliberating on the choice of a calling in life, or, having chosen it, are selecting the best means of filling its duties, is, that God’s will must be sought before and above everything, and that to it our will and inclinations must be subordinated.

Men who choose them, Greater Fools

It is impossible,—where God-fearing young people have been taught, in preparing for marriage, or in the choice of their companions for life, to implore light to know the divine will, and where they have prayed fervently for such light, kept their souls pure to receive it, and their hearts free to follow it,—that God should not direct them aright and guard them against the fatal mistake of such a choice as we are now censuring.

Those who are true to their conscience, true to the light within them, and careful to seek the divine will in the momentous matter of marriage, are but the very few even among our Catholic youth; the immense majority rush into matrimony blindly, without a thought of God, and intent only on following the impulse of passion or the voice of worldly interest.

We care not to insist at length upon this delicate matter. Only, we ask young men, who have neglected the divine guidance, when such mighty motives should have induced them to seek it, whether they have not themselves to blame for making a fool’s choice? Let not the sentiment of self-condemnation, however, become either discouragement or supineness. You have discovered your error,—all too common a one, in our day; now set yourself manfully to retrieve it.

How such Wives can be Educated

But how? How is it possible to transform a “female fool” into a sensible woman? Can these empty heads be ever filled with useful knowledge? Can silliness be made serious? or inveterate indolence be stimulated into habits of wholesome activity and profitable labor? Can the whole character of a soul, hitherto neglected, be changed?

Most assuredly,—with His assistance who is ever first to prompt us to every generous resolution, and ever by our side to sustain us while carrying it out,—and with the help of our own quiet and persevering energy in cooperating with that ever-present goodness.

Man’s Strength made to support Woman’s Weakness

In the first place, see to it that you keep your disappointment to yourself. Let neither word nor look of yours betray even to your companion, that you are conscious of any deficiency in her. If she loves you truly, then you have in the fullness of her affection and in the trust she reposes in you, one of the most powerful means of effecting your purpose. Do not inquire whence her “weakness,”—her softness, indolence, incapacity,—have arisen. Weakness needs to be sustained by strength. You are strong, and must prop up the weak one, that is henceforward to lean on you alone. The graceful creepers of our Southern forests receive from the lordly trees to which they cling, not only support but sustenance. Many of them derive their nourishment entirely from the trunk on which they live.

It is God’s ordinance that the husband should impart to his wedded wife not only the strength which supplements her weakness, but the living energy that enables her to bear abundant fruits of every womanly virtue and graceful accomplishment.

We have known instances where husbands have succeeded, by the silent but eloquent lessons of their own example, in teaching their wives to be orderly, industrious, energetic, model housewives, mistresses, and mothers,—where by gently stimulating womanly pride, they have made them so repair all the evil habits of early training, as to become most companionable in society, as well as most efficient helpmates at home. In some of these we have known a husband to be most ably assisted by his mother or sister,—though it is not often that a weak wife will accept the influence of an accomplished mother-in-law, or of a clever sister-in-law.

The truly Christian forbearance and patient industry on the part of a husband, which we here inculcate, was most ably seconded by his mother in a case that deserves especial mention.

A Noble Example of such Transformation

A young lawyer of good family and great promise had been smitten, during a vacation spent at a fashionable watering-place, with the girlish beauty and artlessness of a lady to whom he was introduced, and she, on her side, was not less taken by the manly grace and evident goodness of the gentleman. His parents were living in a distant State, and he did not think it necessary to consult them, having a handsome income of his own with the fairest prospects of success in his profession. His wish had ever been to find a wife uniting true goodness and purity to personal beauty; and she had been taught by her mother to prefer to all others a young man of her own faith whose past life afforded every assurance of unblemished virtue. The young people thought they had found their ideal in each other, sought each other’s company, became speedily engaged, and were married after less than a month’s acquaintance, the parents of the bride alone assisting at the nuptials.

During his brief wedding-tour, the bridegroom discovered, to his utter dismay, that he had married a beautiful woman, indeed, but that what he had mistaken for artlessness was silliness, and that his wife, though unacquainted with evil, was totally deficient in practical sense, as well as in solid accomplishments of any kind. The blushing timidity of the beautiful girl which had first attracted his attention and won his sympathy, he found, on a nearer view, to be the self-conscious effort of a girl allowed to grow up in uncontrolled ignorance and laziness, and who now shrank from public observation. She was sensitive and not without a certain pride. This was to prove her salvation.

He had contracted, under the discipline of his excellent mother, the habit of monthly confession and communion. The haste with which their nuptials had been celebrated not having permitted them to do more than make a very unsatisfactory confession, he profited by their stay in Philadelphia over Sunday to prepare himself for holy communion, and had no difficulty in persuading his wife to do the same. Fortunately for him,—as he afterward said,—they both applied to the venerable Bishop Kenrick; and to him the disappointed bridegroom opened his whole heart, accusing himself bitterly of the haste with which he had acted in choosing his companion, of having allowed his judgment to be misled by the charms of a fair young face, of having neglected to consult either of his parents before pledging his troth to an utter stranger, and, worse than all, of not having prayed to God for light and guidance. Indeed, he confessed, he had been afraid to pray, lest some secret inspiration from on high should thwart his hope of possessing without delay a prize so fascinating to the outward sense. He disclosed his disappointment and his fears for the future to a fatherly heart most able and most ready to give him timely advice.

The young man was bidden never to make known to any person but his mother the weakness and utter incapacity of his bride. He was to love and cherish her, to show her, both in their own greatest privacy and before others, every mark of honor and respect, laboring meanwhile to associate her in all his own private studies, pursuits, and recreations; he was to get her, as soon as possible, a house of her own, and to take to all appearance unbounded delight in superintending with her its upholstering, decoration, and management. In a word, he was to teach her what and how to do, while seeming to be only interested in seeing her at work.

That he was, at first, and even for a long time, but very partially successful, we are bound to say; that he succeeded in making her at length a wife after his own heart, we cannot affirm; still God did crown his patience and fortitude with results he could not dare to hope for during the first years of his married life.

Her silliness, inefficiency, and sad lack of mental cultivation were to him the cause of daily and hourly mortification. He never knew when she would say or do something unseemly. Indeed, she was almost certain to say and do the wrong thing, when she was most anxious to say and do the right. Yet her husband heroically kept his resolution of never snubbing her or of betraying before others his humiliation and annoyance.

Share of the Mother-in-Law

It so happened that when the young husband arrived at his parents’ home, his mother was prostrated by a long and tedious illness. She saw at a glance what a mistake her son had made, and neither she nor his father ever ventured to utter one word of reproach. They read in his looks how keen was his disappointment, and understood from his admirable behavior toward his wife, that he had determined to repair his fault by unremitting devotion to her comfort and improvement.

The mother thanked God fervently for this, and with the instinct of a true woman and a true mother, she resolved to win the heart of her daughter-in-law. She would show a preference for her company above that of her own daughters; she professed to feel better each time the timid, blundering stranger conversed with her or ministered to her comfort. Every flower she brought to the sick-room was placed on the table within reach of the invalid. Every little article coming from the bride’s hand was made much of and displayed conspicuously. Thus was the latter powerfully attracted to the sufferer.

A True Mother’s Wisdom

Meanwhile the young couple had been preparing their own residence, the mother-in-law being consulted with a childish delight on every detail pertaining to the furniture and arrangement. When her health was so far improved as to permit her doing so, she was prevailed upon by her children to pay them a visit; and, once in the house, she was kept perforce by its mistress, who devoted herself to her in earnest. This circumstance was a most providential one for the new home. The little silly wife,—thanks to the joint but skillfully concealed efforts of the sick mother and her daughters,—was initiated into all the mysteries of house-keeping, and trained to preside at her own table, to receive the most brilliant and numerous company, and thus to do the honors of her husband’s house with as few mistakes as possible.

When afterward left alone to her own resources, her pride was stimulated to keep everything in the beautiful order established by her mother-in-law,—her husband all the while secretly aiding his companion in her laborious effort at system and regularity.

To be sure, there were cloudy days in these first years of their union. But there was also sunshine. The outside world, never slow at guessing, and guessing correctly, where lie the difficulties of young married life,—had too many amusing anecdotes to tell about the queer blunders of the brilliant lawyer’s not very brilliant companion. Few there were, however, who did not respect him sincerely for his chivalrous devotion to her, his constant deference to her every wish, and wonder, as well, at the marked improvement in her manners and her conversation. Everybody believed them most happy in each other; and he certainly never allowed even her to suspect that he was not the most blessed of husbands.

The Noble Husband’s Reward

He rose steadily in his noble profession,—and as he rose, he lifted with him to his own level the weak, dependent creature, who now looked up to him with a love that almost amounted to adoration. The children born to her were reared with infinite care. Both parents drew all their strength, as well as their chief happiness in life, from their habits of sincere piety. Though they were wealthy, their life was one of generous self-denial, their home, their heart, and their hand being ever open to distress and the need of all less favored than themselves. How could God refuse to bless their efforts in rearing children worthy of Him?

The self-sacrificing sense of duty which had sustained the husband through so many years of trial was crowned with a heroic death during the first years of our great civil war. His conduct from the hour that he awoke disappointed from his dream of early love, till he parted voluntarily with his wife and children at the call of his country, was that of the true man and the true Christian. He, his mother, sisters, and wife, followed simply in what they did and bore and forbore, the time-honored rules of Catholic morality. You will say, perchance,—this was genuine good sense, as well as enlightened piety. We shall not gainsay it. The supernatural wisdom of the Gospel only perfects our nature in its views of duty and its generosity in living up to it. The Catholic man need only be faithful to the teachings of his Great Mother to be the model husband, the loving and devoted father, and the heroic patriot, as well. Of every true son of that Mother, in life as well as in death, it must always be said:

What may be done with the Vicious

It is when a husband is wedded to perverseness of temper or disposition, or, still more, when he is appalled by discovering vicious habits where he had expected to find every womanly virtue,—that there is need of all the strength and fortitude of true Christian manhood.

Nor is it easy to say who has the heaviest cross to bear,—the husband tied to a woman blameless, indeed, so far as moral purity is concerned, but otherwise unsociable and ungovernable,—or the man who has brought vice to rule his home.

With the misfortune of the latter,—worthy of the helpful sympathy of angels and men, we can venture only to deal briefly. We have known good men, at least in the judgment of the world and of their own family, afflicted with this irreparable calamity. Of course, where such a union is contracted without any pretense of ignoring the antecedents of the wife, the unworthy husband deserves no commiseration. Should he apply, when the consequences of the choice he has wittingly made press hard upon him, to the guide of consciences for comfort and advice, no true priest will refuse either the one or the other. It is a poor soul,—perhaps two souls,—to be saved from perdition,—or a great scandal which must be prevented from becoming greater,—and so the minister of mercy will deal with these souls in extreme need in the spirit of his divine Master and Model.

Infinite Prudence and Generosity needed

When, on the other hand, the husband’s sad mishap is known to him alone, or so secret that there is but little danger of its being blown abroad, and when the sick soul with whom his life is linked is willing to be healed, then the path to be pursued is a plain one. The unhappy husband is bound to save his own honor, and bound, as a Christian, to aid in healing and saving a soul. To no one living,—save only in so far as he may have to consult his spiritual guide,—ought he to lay bare the wound in his own heart or the sin of his companion. A confessor eminent as well for his learning and experience as for his piety, will be for such a man the friend of friends, the most precious aid ever sent to mortal man in his direst need by Him who, being our Father, is ever anxious most lovingly to provide for our pressing wants.

Let a husband, circumstanced in this way, cast about for such a man of God, and his honor as well as his happiness (so far as happiness is here possible) will be safe in his keeping. From such a friend he will learn what course to follow in dealing with the guilty wife, how he is to temper gentleness with austerity, and how far any show of affection may serve to mitigate or to sweeten the bitterness worse than death of a guilty heart striving to recover itself.

When He, who is the Infinite Majesty and the unapproachable Holiness, descended to our level, becoming one of a fallen, crime-covered race, that in his merciful human arms He might lift us up with Him to His own divine rank, how did He teach every man of us to deal with the souls that had fallen lowest and wandered farthest from innocence and right?

See Him at the table of the Pharisee, surrounded by the proud censorious sectarian friends of his host, and observe how yonder woman, noted throughout the city for her sinful life, approaches the Master stealthily,—but oh! so trustfully and so reverently! It is sin, self-conscious, wretched, humbled to the dust, seeking to lay its intolerable burden at the feet of God, and drawn toward His present, visible Mercy with the united forces of its own misery and His unbounded helpfulness. How she weeps at these blessed feet! How sweet are the tears which well up from the bitter depths in her soul! Then the long tresses are cast loose to wipe away from His feet the traces of her grief, as if it had left a stain behind! And the irresistible impulse of the new-born gratitude is to touch with her lips these same feet that had traveled so far to seek her soul!

If it be true,—and the most august and venerable authorities induce the pious mind to believe it,—that it was this same “sinner” who followed her Benefactor to the Cross, who stood with His Mother beneath its dreadful shadow, amid the terrors of the earthquake and the darkness, the threats, the violence, the blasphemies, and mockeries of the brutal crowd; who watched by His remains, and waited near his sepulcher, when only one man among the chosen Twelve, and one only from among the hundreds of his disciples, dared to render the last sad honors to the glorious Dead;—then we know what repentant love can do, and what divine generosity can fill a heart renovated by God-given sorrow, and overflow in a life redeemed from shame by forgiveness and a love proportioned to the mercy shown.

This must be the eternal model held out to manly pity while dealing with the erring,—with those especially who have the nearest claims on one’s affections.

See how mercifully that most loving Kindness shields the poor penitent at His feet from the prurient curiosity and pitiless judgment of the host and his uncharitable circle of guests. He exalts the heroic faith of that heart-stricken one, immeasurably above the scant courtesy of the Pharisee and his household. “I entered into thy house; thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she with tears hath washed my feet, and with her hairs hath wiped them. Thou gavest me no kiss: but she, since she came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet.”

If the soul which reads this page is one which God has stamped with the nobleness of true manhood, then may we be dispensed from further dwelling on a subject so full of subtle danger to the inexperienced. We who need forgiveness and are not sure of deserving it, pitiless that we are toward the erring, would do well to ponder these sentiments of a womanly heart well tried by suffering:

Oh! manly hearts, capable of every divine sentiment and Godlike deed, do not “reject” Him in the persons of his most needy ones; but learn to lift up, and strengthen and “sustain,” those dearest to his mercy, because most in need of it,—and what may you not hope from Him?

How to Deal with Perverse Wives

With mere perversity of disposition and temper, it is even harder to deal than with the fallen and guilty. The soul gently, mercifully, and tenderly dealt with by forgiveness, and the generous aid bestowed toward newness of life,—feels prompted by all the noblest instincts of its nature to be humble and reverent and docile in its demeanor toward its helpmate and physician.

Not so with that perversity which has its roots in pride and utter selfishness. Pride, its parent, has never taught it to respect others or to yield to them in aught; and selfishness, which is its nurse, has accustomed its bantling to consider nothing but its own wants and caprices.

One man’s noble but utterly wretched life is now before us, a life open to many not only in its public merits, but in its domestic griefs.

His was a nature as innocent, as guileless as a babe’s, giving out the light and warmth of his great soul as freely, as unreservedly as the sun distributes its beams. From his destitute boyhood and struggling youth upward to the close of his most useful and honored life, that rich nature of his continued to glow, to enlighten, to cheer others forward in every noble pursuit. And all that,—in spite of the young, beautiful, but perverse companion, who made his home dark and cheerless by her ungovernable temper, and starved a heart which yearned for love and home-comfort.

Why these Types of Women are mentioned

How many such wives are to be found in all classes? How often is the home of the rich man, whose wealth and position are the reward of a whole life of unceasing application to business, rendered unendurable by such perverseness as the above! And how many sober, hard-working, and noble-minded mechanics and laboring-men, are driven to the tavern, to intemperance, and to ruin temporal and eternal, by these domestic furies, who have never learned to govern either their temper or their tongue!

Are we saying this to excuse or cloak over the sins of the men in the household,—husbands, sons, or brothers? or, are we holding up the infirmities of the weaker sex to censure, in order to shield from blame the vices of the sex which should ever be the support, the guide, the model, of wife, of daughter, and sister?

No, certainly. We are, like guides over the snow-fields and passes of the Alps, only pointing out from an eminence, the treacherous fissures in the ice where so many unwary travelers have already perished, or the precipitous mountain-slopes rendered famous by many a fatal mishap. We know of countless, countless homes made unhappy and unendurable to husbands, sons, and daughters, by the untamed temper of those who should have been the angels of these homes, making them the bright, peaceful, restful places to which their dear ones might come after toil to find the sweet image of God’s Home on high. We state the fact simply in order to address ourselves to the manly hearts in whom we trust, and to urge them by every most powerful motive to exercise a double share of heroism in counteracting the unavoidable evil.

Fortitude required to overcome Perverseness

Marvelous and incredible as are the effects of a noble woman’s patient, uncomplaining fortitude and unwearied industry in maintaining a home and hallowing it in spite of a husband’s unthriftiness and vice,—there is something still more deserving of admiration in the patient endurance of a husband tied to a shiftless woman whose wicked tongue never tires.

We have known of a family of eight children, born of such a graceless mother, and reared through the saintly examples of their father to be, all of them, model men and women. The father himself, a poor shoemaker, taught every one of his children reading and writing, as well as the elements of Christian doctrine, made them, from childhood, love to share with him his daily practices of piety, to kneel with him monthly at the Table of the Lamb, and to aid him, as they grew up, to make of his home a place so sweet and so restful, that the priest of the parish was wont to bring his friends there to show them a model Christian household. Two of the sons learned their father’s trade, and in course of time his business increased and brought him far more than plenty. The other boy became a distinguished civil engineer, and three of the girls, when we last heard of the family, had married well-to-do tradesmen, and made admirable wives.

But what of their mother? it will naturally be asked. She died, stricken with paralysis, after twenty-one years of married life,—a portly dame, who had brought to her husband for dowry a handsome face, the scourge of a tongue that nothing could quiet but the icy hand of death, and a temper which neither the examples of her husband and children, nor the exact performance of her outward religious duties, could ever sweeten. One would think that she had been sent to that household to afford its inmates a perpetual occasion of practicing the sweetest domestic virtues. Few among their neighbors and acquaintances were allowed to suspect the existence of such shocking infirmities in the wife and mother.

The secret of this true manhood in this lowly-born and scarcely educated craftsman, was his high sense of duty; and it was the idea of duty which governed the conduct of his noble children toward their mother. The husband, docile to the voice of his conscience, when on the very threshold of his married life he discovered his wife’s infirmities of judgment, temper, and conduct,—resolved forthwith to devote his life to the one purpose of reforming her if he could, or of bearing with her, if he could not. But, whether he could or not, he owed it to God, he thought, that he should be master in the house of his own soul, and overcome his wife’s violence by invincible patience, and repair the consequences of her shiftlessness and utter incapacity by his own application. He loved her tenderly when he sought and wooed her; that love survived to the end in spite of her manifold defects. And she, in spite of that other wrathful spirit which seemed to rule her own, never ceased to love him truly. She boasted to all who knew her that he was the best of men, and confessed herself unworthy of him. One resolution he formed during the very first month of their union,—that he should never taste intoxicating drinks so long as he lived; and he kept it sacredly. His sons found no difficulty in walking in the footsteps of a father, whose life in every one of its most secret details, could bear the scrutiny of God’s recording angel.

How could such children help honoring their mother, and, like their father, never even among themselves, alluding to her weaknesses?

Will you say that such examples are almost above the ordinary strength of human nature? We can only reply that they are in exact conformity with the examples shown forth in the Gospel, and intended for imitation in the ordinary every-day life of Christian households. To convince you of this, weigh well the pregnant teaching of the following chapter.

The life of a man who is happily married to a woman after his own heart and after the heart of God as well, is, despite the trials and sufferings incidental to the lot of the best and truest men,—like a safe and smooth voyage down our great South American streams, amid all the magnificences of nature. On the contrary, such a life as that at which we have been glancing, is a journey through sandy wastes and treeless mountain-solitudes, where only pools of brackish, bitter water offer to the wayfarers any chance of refreshment. Did not the God who made the whole earth command the great Hebrew leader of old, as his famishing people lay down near such poisonous pools as these, to cast into them a wood which He designated, and were not the waters thereby made sweet and wholesome?⁵5Exodus, xv. 22, 24; Numbers, xxxiii. 8.

Have we Christians, after eighteen centuries of Christian life, yet to learn what is the virtue of the Cross to sweeten what appears hopelessly bitter in home-life, and the power of the Crucified to lighten life’s most intolerable burthen for every man who will take up his cross and follow Him?

We bid the reader to the study of the following chapter, as we would to listen to the divinest harmonies ever created by human genius.