Little Problems of Married Life XIX

Little Problems of Married Life.

BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN

XIX — Talking Business Matters at Home There is a theory held by many that a man should not "talk shop" at home, that when he puts his latch-key into his house door he should leave business with all its cares, fears, worries and trials on the outside as the Orientals take off their sandals before entering a dwelling. It is a gold-brick of advice that will not stand the acid test of wisdom and experience. It sounds unselfish, sacrificing, considerate, heroic and magnanimous, but it is a dangerous half-truth. The husband has no right to bring home his irritation, his impatience, and his restless anger and vent them on his wife and family, but cutting off his whole business life from discussion is unjust — to both. One half, at least, of the waking hours of most men is devoted to business. When a man builds a solid wall of silence around this half of his living, and puts up a warning sign "No Admittance," so high that his wife cannot peer over, so unbroken that she cannot peek through nor learn anything of what is going on, it kills confidence, weakens comradeship and unwisely strains love. Women do not always realize that genuine interest in a man's business is often the shortest road to his heart. His ambitions, his efforts, his hopes, his fears, his longings, his dreams and his ideals that centre in his busines mean much to him. He cannot always ring down the curtain after the dav's performance is over and put it all away for the night as children do their toys. He wants, sometimes, when the pressure is a little harder than usual, to talk it all over, to get sympathy, reinforcement in moments of doubt, a kind helping hand through a perilous place, fresh, unpre-

*Copyright, 1910. by Fleming H. Revell Company.

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judiced eyes to see a problem, new courage in despondency, new hope when too tired to find it alone. When business matters are not talked over at home it is often the fault of the wife. In the courtship days it may have been her interest in his dreams of success and his struggles to win it, her sweet, ready sympathy that first made him really care for her before he was really conscious of the depths of his feeling. They talked over his little trials, his discouragements, his ambitions she knew all the clerks in the office by name it was to her ; ;

he first told some compliment, some word of special appreciation that some work of his had received. It was her counsel and sympathy made smoother and easier to bear a little unreasonable jealousy; the promise of an increase in salary he confided to her with a boyish eagerness and delight, for it brought their union nearer and seemed to make the future more serene and certain. But after marriage the threads of this confidence may somehow slip silently and unnoted through her fingers and she may sometime suddenly awaken to the realization of the change and be unable to say when it began. He may speak little of business and when he does speak it is only to tell of some important change that she must know. Even then he gives only the bald final fact with little or no detail. It is like a newspaper heading, telling the essentials in the fewest possible words. She wants detail, all the minutiae of conditions, the whole story. She may long to share in all his sorrows, griefs, fears, worries. She may feel that she is a rank outsider, beyond the pale of his confidence, when she overhears his cozy chat over business matters with some man friend she is conscious of a sense of inad- ;

equacy as though she were not necessary to him in some way, and that there is one room in his life where she does not enter. She feels a broken link in comradeship and may blame him in her heart. Confidence is a elelicate plant and it is so easy to blight it. Sometimes a wife listens to a talk on business in a half-bored, half-listening, unsympathetic manner that gives confidence a cold chill. Sometimes when he tells her of some big deal he hopes to put through, her first thought is not of its success for his sake, but a sealskin coat, and she thoughtlessly asks him will he get one for her if it comes out right. The husband thinks sadly: — "It is the rake-off that interests her not me." Sometimes she pounces down on a mistake of judgment, an unwise move, j'ust to show how sharp and shrewd she is in business, and it makes him feel mean and humiliated. He needs a poultice of sympathy; she gives him a blister of condemnation. She may sneak in an irritating tone of finality, as to the wisdom or folly of some course, that would be arrogant assumption of omniscience even from the Supreme Court. She may on one oc-

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casion have scored a bull's-eye with some chance shot of advice and think she is infallible. Sometimes in her love and interest she may be over-anxious, take thing's over-scriously and his little incidental reference to a matter of no real consequence her imagination may conjure into a Waterloo and keep her awake nights. Sometimes she demands confidence as a right and, of course, fails. You cannot open confidence as you do an oyster it expands ;

gently from within in response to a genial, stimulating influence from without, as a bud becomes a rose. Sometimes the husband refrains from talking because he foolishly underestimates the wife's ability to understand. At one time he would have been willing to spend a week explaining the inscriptions on an obelisk or even some more puzzling subject, like the tariff, had she expressed the slightest wish to understand it. Sometimes he does not let her know that he is navigating through dangerous waters because he "does not want to worry her." This — may be a reason or an excuse in either case it is unwise. This attitude not just nor complimentary to the woman is nor to the wife, neither to her sex nor to her as an individual. It is the wax doll theory of wifehood, keeping her in the pink cot-

ton of ignorance, far away from any warmth of trouble. If she be well in body and mind, let her worry a bit if it seem necessary. It will not really hurt her as a real wife and comrade it is what ;

she wants. Better the worry of knowledge than the worry of ignorance. When he comes home, night after night, preoccupied, wearied and anxious and to her repeated question, "What is the matter, dear?" gives the same old answer, "Nothing at all; not a thing," then she does worry. Her imagination runs every note of several octaves of speculation and possibility. Then may come that instinctive fear that sometimes clutches a wife's heart, that comes firstbecause she fears it most "He no longer loves me." With :

this thought, innocent, disassociated facts, words, acts, things said or unsaid, done or undone, through that strange ingenuity of circumstantial evidence dovetail to make suspicion seem absolute truth. If he had told her the whole story frankly, freely, fully, and then said "We are going through trying times at the office, dear :

business is dull, money is tight and collections slow. I don't want to deny you a single thing necessary for your comfort or your pleasure, you know that, but if you cut down expenses wherever you can, just for a little, everything you don't really need, let's trim sail and keep to shore and we'll pull through, dear, we'll pull — through together. I need you now more than ever, just stand close to me and let me feel you trust me every minute and that you understand and just forgive and forget if I am a bit cross or

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impatient, for it is not really me, you know, but the worry, dear" — she would feel almost happy. There would be the weight of an anxiety that steadies a character and unifies a soul. It is not that vague phantom of worry that paralyzes energy. She has a new object in living; she is going to help him through, he needs her; she loves him more because they seem nearer and dearer she will save so carefully and :

find a joy in it. She will fall bravely into line and almost forget the restrictions of their life in the glow and tingle of the pleasure of the comradeship. She wishes she had known it sooner, for she might have spared him so much impatience, bitterness, and worry — had she known. Talking business matters at home does not mean that the husband should save up all the nagging details of every-day business and retail them to her at night, like a child showing a pinscratch and gently squeezing it a little to widen it and redden it a bit to make it look more awful and to win more sympathy, but the real big things that puzzle him, that worry, that mean much, that interest deeply — whatever interests him vitally should interest her. Business is not all sorrow, struggle, strain.There is the keen zest of competition, the red blood of enterprise and accomplishment, joy-spots of pleasant interviews and special successes. There are incidents of quaint people, the humor of funny customers, interesting news of new inventions, improvements, changes, tendencies, movements and trends. These are worthy of the telling, and may be of value as information or warning. Wives should know of the temptations and trials and tests of business life. Many a man has been encouraged to stand bravely by the right by a wife who heartened him in his ideals, who counted principles higher than mere money and who would not consent to some get-rich-quick scheme that might get under the wire of the law but would not square with sterling honesty and the higher ethics of truth and justice. The wife, whether she be sympathetic, helpful, and genuinely interested or not, should know, at least, the amount of the husband's income and whether the business is prospering how ;

— much more she is told rests with him and herself. She should know this in order to gauge her expenditure and to direct properly their living. The world often condemns a wife as being extravagant at a time when her husband is passing through a period of business stress and storm. She who should be the first to know of this may be the last she may believe that her husband's income and ;

position not only justifies but practically demand her living on a certain scale. It may be the husband who really sets the pace and she merely follows. She may be not only willing but anxious to

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live the simple life, and would gladly lower the key of their spending if she realized it would help him. A wife may believe herself provided for in the event of the death of her husband, but when this sad hour comes, may find his insurance policies had lapsed, his business is mortgaged, his creditors are practically in possession and she is penniless. Had business matters been talked over at home the wreck might have — been obviated or its evil lessened at least the sudden shock of revelation could not take her unawares. A wife may find at her husband's death that he has left her ample money, but not the knowledge of how to keep it, how to invest it, how to guard it. His silence for years on business matters has left her innocent and ignorant as a child. She may be easy prey to the dazzling schemes of unscrupulous promoters with great land enterprises, claims of inventions that will revolutionize an industry, Golconda mines that are earthy mints of millions, marvelous rubber plantation properties that will pay tremendous dividends, or some other painless method of becoming Monte Christos without risk. The money that means the consecrated devotion and love of years may all trickle away in the sands of knavery because of her ignorance of business. Some poorer sister, left destitute of money as well as of business knowledge, bravely facing the world alone in a hard fight for daily bread, may run perilously close to the rock of disaster, and be subject unnecessarily to cruel snares and entanglements, insidious dangers and pitfalls. She walks unprotected in the weakness of her ignorance, along a way where she should have been armored with wisdom had the husband who loved her been wise as he was loving. Talking business matters at home inspires confidence, strengthens comradeship and intensifies love. It helps to hold monotony at bay it is a bond that may keep two from growing ;

apart mentally and perhaps even from drifting apart emotionally ;

it helps both in pulling together through a crisis and it means truer, deener union and unity on one of the great questions of married life. ["The Ebb-Tide of Love" is the title of the next chapter in this series.]

We all belong to each other, but friendship is the especial accord of one life with a kindred life. We tremble at the threshold of any new friendship; with awe and wonder and fear, lest it should not be real, or, believing that it is, lest we should prove unworthy of this solemn and holy contact of life with life, of soul with soul. We cannot live unworthy lives in the constant presence of noble beings to whom we belong, and who believe that we are at least endeavoring after nobleness.— Ralph li'cldo Emcrscn.

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