The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book

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From childhood boys and girls find out how children come, but the secret
of a good character, temperament, and disposition is not so readily
found.

The reason why character is the most important requisite for success in
marriage is not merely that it happens to be the chief cause of
happiness, but that those who have character can turn an unsuccessful
marriage into a successful one, instead of taking the easy way out, and
acknowledging failure. No man or no woman is to blame for making a
foolish marriage; it might happen to anyone. The test of character is
not whether one has or has not made a foolish marriage; the test comes
after the foolish marriage has been made. What a triumph then to turn
that failure into a success, as the statesman turns a minority into a
majority!

This article is addressed to young people, for those who marry late in
life either do not need any suggestions or are already incurable. I am
in favor of early marriages. I am delighted when either the boy's
parents or those of the girl have money enough so that the young pair
can be married at twenty-two, before they begin professional study or
work. And when there is little money but either or both have a job, then
by all means they should be married. When young people marry, they take
difficulties of housekeeping and privations as a lark, even as young
people do camping out. When I was a boy, camping out was absolute bliss;
now it would be absolute horror. Furthermore, in youth neither of them
has "set"; they can accommodate themselves to each other.

The late President Harper of the University of Chicago was married at
nineteen--not so young in his case, for he had already taken his
doctor's degree. He told me that during the first five or six years
there were times when neither he nor his wife could mail a letter,
because they did not have enough cash to buy one postage stamp. He
laughed aloud as he recounted this, and added, "There was never one
moment when either of us regretted our marriage."

Marriage can be wonderful from every point of view when it is a
combination of the highest physical delight with the highest spiritual
development. It is indeed the sublimation of the senses. The great
novelist George Meredith, who hated priggishness in all its forms, said
in a letter: "I have written always with the perception that there is
no life but of the spirit; that the concrete is really the shadowy; yet
that the way to spiritual life lies in the complete unfolding of the
creature, not in the nipping of his passions. An outrage to Nature helps
to extinguish his light. To the flourishing of the spirit, then, through
the healthy exercise of the senses."

Could there be a better description of the union of physical and
spiritual development in marriage than his phrase "the complete
unfolding of the creature"?

To his son Meredith wrote: "Look for the truth in everything, and follow
it, and you will then be living justly before God. Let nothing flout
your sense of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding
wavers whenever you chance to doubt that He leads to good. We grow to
good as surely as the plant grows to the light. Do not lose the habit of
praying to the unseen Divinity. Prayer for worldly goods is worse than
fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul
which catches the gift it seeks."

What is love? From the age of six or seven on boys and girls fall in
love with a good many different persons. But this is not the same thing
as married love, which grows by companionship and by sharing sorrows as
well as pleasures. Many years ago a college friend of mine, a splendid
fellow with everything to make life worth living, was married to a fine
girl. He died suddenly, during the first week of the honeymoon. I said
to a man of sixty, "Can anything be more tragic than that?"

"Yes," he replied unhesitatingly, "it is more tragic when the husband or
wife dies after twenty-five years of marriage."

He was right; the loss after twenty-five years is more terrible; and in
the instance I mentioned the shattered and desolated bride was in two
years happily married to a second husband.

The overwhelming passion of love is certainly rapture, and marriage is
its most satisfying consummation. But true love is not so expressive in
desire for possession as it is in consideration for the welfare of the
beloved object. "Oh, how I love you!" may not mean as much as "Don't go
out without your rubbers on." Do you remember that passage in Guy de
Maupassant where the husband said just that to his wife? And they were
astounded when the maiden aunt, who had lived with them for years
without a word of dissatisfaction, who had gone in and out of the room
as unremarked as the family cat, who was thought to be incapable of
emotion, suddenly burst into a storm of weeping and cried, "No one has
ever cared whether or not I had my rubbers on!"

Yet expressions of love and passion, embraces and caresses, are also
essential. I told my students, "After you are married never leave the
house, even if only to post a letter at the corner, without kissing your
wife." This very simple act is a tremendous preservative of married
happiness.

I also advised them during the first twenty years of marriage to occupy
the same bedroom. Quarrels and even insults given in the heat of anger
are certain to happen in nine marriages out of ten. It is supremely
important not to let these flames of resentment become a fatal
conflagration. They must not last. Never go to sleep with resentment in
your hearts.

"And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love,
And kiss again with tears!"

Although happy marriages are common (unhappy ones are still news), the
only ideal, flawless marriages I ever heard of were those of the
Brownings and the Hawthornes; in both instances the husbands were men of
genius and the wives positively angelic.

Since the greatest of all the arts is the art of living together, and
since the highest and most permanent happiness depends on it, and since
the way to practice this art successfully lies through character, the
all-important question is how to obtain character.

The surest way is through religion--religion in the home. All that we
know for certain of every person is that he is imperfect. Human
imperfection means a chronic need for improvement. The most tremendous
and continuous elevating, purifying, strengthening force is religious
faith.

My parents neglected my social training. I am sorry they did. They were
careless about my clothes and my personal appearances. I am sorry for
it. But I am supremely grateful for their religious and spiritual
training. Every day of my life I am grateful. I would rather belong to
the church than belong to any other organization or society or club. I
would rather be a church member than receive any honor or decoration in
the world.

It amuses me when I read novels written by those who never had any
religious faith or who have lost it, novels that describe religious
training in the home as producing unhappiness and hypocrisy and
morbidity, the atmosphere one of thick gloom. As I look back on my
childhood, it seems to me that our house was full of laughter. Table
conversation was enlivened with mirth. If there ever was a merry
household, it was ours. Our daily existence was full of fun, and
Christmas, New Years, Fourth of July, and birthdays were delirious.

This is normal and natural and logical. Religious faith is a central
heating plant--it warms and energizes one's whole existence. It gives a
reason for life itself, for development. It gives a philosophy for
conduct, and, far more important, it _emotionalizes_ conduct even more
strongly than athletics and patriotism.

Of all essential things, the most essential in married life and in the
bringing up of children is religion. When two people are engaged and are
making plans for living together, they are sure to discuss religion. You
remember how suddenly Marguerite turned to Faust and asked him
point-blank, "Do you believe in God?"

A chief reason why bringing up children is so difficult is that example
is so much more important than precept. I am a qualified literary
critic, although I never wrote a novel; I am a qualified drama critic,
although I never wrote a play; I am a qualified baseball and lawn tennis
critic, although I never was a first-class player. But when parents
endeavor to bring up children to reflect honor on the family and be
useful members of society, the parents must set a good example. A man
once wrote to Carlyle asking him if he ought to teach his little
children to say prayers. The severe Scot replied: "Yes, but only if you
pray yourself. Don't teach them anything in which you yourself do not
believe."

The Scot was right. To teach little children to say their prayers when
the parents never say them themselves is like teaching a dog to say his
prayers, a trick that seems to amuse many people. To have little
children say grace at the table when no adult in the room has any faith
is again only a pretty trick. But to send them to church and Sunday
School when the parents stay away is far worse; it is culpable. Then the
children regard church-going, praying, and religion as one of the
innumerable burdens and penalties of childhood, from which they will
escape as soon as they reach independence.

When Overton, the great Yale athlete, who was killed in the war, left
his Tennessee home to go to college, his father told him that he would
not give him any advice as to morals or behavior; "but, Johnny, will you
promise me that you will never go to sleep at night until you have said
your prayers?" John promised, and afterward told his father he had kept
his word.

If both young husband and wife share a similar religious belief, it is
an enormous asset; and immense help to permanence in married happiness.
Now, one cannot believe in God and in Our Lord merely by wishing to do
so. Yet I often think that many who do not believe do not really wish to
with passionate earnestness; with as strong a wish as they have for
money or good looks or popularity.

There are many who say and more who think without saying: "If I only had
the faith I had as a child! Then I believed in God and in Jesus Christ
and in Heaven." One might almost as well say, "If I only had the
knowledge of algebra I had as a child!" Why do small boys and girls know
algebra and why in later years do they not know it? Because when they
were at school, they gave their attention to it; they studied it; they
thought about it. But after leaving school they may never have opened an
algebra book or considered the subject again.

What does one expect? If one expresses regret for the lost faith of
childhood, it is proper to ask: "How long is it since you read the
Gospels? How long is it since you prayed?"

Since religious faith is such an asset to happiness, such a foundation
for character and for married life and bringing up children, one might
make an effort to recover it, or at least to consider it.

I believe Sunday should be a day of joy and happiness. Sunday afternoon
games and recreation are fine, but one enjoys them more if one has been
to church in the morning or spent part of the day in either solitary or
community worship. Those parents who selfishly seek only their own
pleasures every weekend, who do nothing but amuse themselves--are they
likely to bring up their children successfully?

To those who have no faith and to those who have lost it let me
recommend some wise words by Dean Inge. There are those who are as
explosively and suddenly "converted" as was St. Paul; but there are also
those who cannot have such an experience; and many, many are the ways to
God. Give the matter serious attention; it deserves it. It is the most
serious of all things.

Being educated means to prefer the best not only to the worst but to the
second best. It means in music to prefer Beethoven not only to jazz but
to Brahms. So it is in all forms of art, in athletics, in politics, in
everything.

Now, the Person celebrated in the Gospels is the greatest Personality in
all history. He knew more about life than Shakespeare. He was the
greatest nerve specialist who ever lived. "Come unto me ... and you
shall find rest unto your souls." His way is incomparably the best way;
it is the way to peace of mind, to courage, independence, fearlessness,
to joy. If we find faith lacking, try His way.

Listen to Dean Inge; he is discussing the illumination of the mind that
_follows recognition_ of the Master:

"This illumination must be earned, or rather prepared for, by a
strenuous course of moral discipline. The religious life begins with
Faith, which has been defined ... as the resolution to stand or fall by
the noblest hypothesis. This venture of the will and conscience
progressively verifies itself as we progress on the upward path. _That
which began as an experiment ends as an experience._ We become
accustomed to breathe the atmosphere of the spiritual world."

Young people about to be married, young people recently married, young
fathers and mothers, should give religion the most serious
consideration. To neglect it, to be indifferent to it, is worse and more
foolish than to be antagonistic. Religion is not a frill or an ornament
or a luxury; still less is it a thing to clutch at only in danger or in
heartbreak.

Religion is the greatest creative force in the world; it has made
thousands of saints and thousands of heroes; it has revolutionized
innumerable individual lives. It has changed people from selfishness to
unselfishness; from cowardice to courage; from despair to hope; from
vulgarity to decency; from barrenness of life to fruitfulness. When
religion can change the lives of millions, when it can produce supreme
creations in art, it is a force worth serious consideration.

Religious faith has produced the finest architecture, the finest
painting, the finest music, the finest literature in the world.

The late John Philip Sousa, the famous composer and bandmaster, said
that the reason why there was not so much great music produced in the
twentieth as in the nineteenth century was that religious faith had
declined. According to him, creation is based on faith. This may be
claiming too much, but his testimony as a composer is interesting.

The American philosopher Paul Elmer More, who died in 1937, and who was
one of the most profound scholars in the world, after prolonged thought
and study and observation, came from agnosticism into a complete and
passionate faith in the Christian religion and in the incarnation. He
said that while love was the main principle in religion as a way of
life, the most important contribution to humanity made by religion was
hope. Hope in the destiny of man, in the superlative value of the
individual, in the Personality of our Father in Heaven.

I might add that if hope deferred maketh the heart sick, hope destroyed
maketh the heart dead.

The most unfair, last word to describe religious faith is the word
anesthetic. Religious faith is a comfort to the old, the sick, and the
suffering; but in general it is not a sedative, it is a tonic. It is a
dynamo; it is a driving force. Henry Drummond, the most effective
speaker on religion I can remember, said to a group of students: "I ask
you to become Christians not because you may die tonight but because you
are going to live tomorrow. I come not to save your souls, but to save
your lives."

Religion adds an enormous zest to daily life; it makes everything
interesting. It keeps alive the capacity of wonder. I myself am
interested in everything in the world, from a sandlot ball game to the
nebula in Orion. The mainspring of my existence, the foundation of my
happy and exciting life, is Christian faith.

I suggest to those recently married and those about to be married that
they are entering into a relationship that can bring them the highest
and most lasting happiness or the most crushing disillusion and despair.
Such a relationship is particularly remarkable because of its intimacy,
an intimacy far transcending that of friendship, love of parents, or any
earthly emotion. As Thomas Hardy said, marriage annihilates reserve. In
this amazing intimacy every care should be taken to insure success. A
common interest in religion, saying prayers together, will help
enormously toward increasing and preserving happiness.

For a true belief in the Christian religion will improve daily manners.
Husband and wife will not take each other for granted; they will not
become stodgy or commonplace or stereotyped.

Tennyson gave in "The Princess" the real kind of marriage which one of
my students described in the vernacular: "I am going to be married. It
won't be much of a wedding, but it will be a wonderful marriage." Listen
to Tennyson:

"For woman is not undevelopt man,
But diverse. Could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words."

A wife may be a civilizing force; this is well. But she may be far more
than that. She may be a revelation in daily intimacy more unconsciously
impressive than a professional saint.

This is what _Caponsacchi_ said of an imagined union with _Pompilia_, in
Browning's "The Ring and the Book":

"To live, and see her learn, and learn by her,
Out of the low obscure and petty world--
Or only see one purpose and one will
Evolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right;
To have to do with nothing but the true,
The good, the eternal--and these, not alone
In the main current of the general life,
But small experiences of every day,
Concerns of the particular hearth and home:
To learn not only by a comet's rush
But a rose's birth, not by the grandeur, God,
But the comfort, Christ."

_Stanley G. Dickinson_

CHAPTER ELEVEN

_It Pays to be Happily Married_

Business believe that the happily married man will occupy a bigger
position in the business world than will the man who is unhappy at home.
The young men and young women in _Good Housekeeping's_
marriage-relations course have a right to know this, to know precisely
the interest which business has in harmonious marriage and the extent to
which home life is a factor when men are considered for promotion,
employment, or transfer--any one of which means more income, more
responsibility, and an opportunity to live more fully.

Business might very logically take another view. It _might_ believe that
the single man is the better employee, because single men are free to
travel, are not burdened with the expenses of a family, do not run the
risk of going home to trouble. It _might_ believe that the home
experiences and environment of the people it hires are not its concern.
But business is concerned with these aspects and young people should
know in what way and why.

While business negotiates with the husband, it has long since learned
that _both_ husband and wife are entitled to consideration whenever one
is being employed or promoted. The more important the job, the more
important it becomes to determine whether husband and wife have tried to
keep pace with each other, or whether there is discord at home. Business
can afford to place responsibility upon the mentally capable, energetic,
and tactful man _if_ his marriage relations are harmonious. It cannot
afford to gamble with the man who is in trouble at home--not necessarily
vicious trouble, but trouble arising from carelessness, maladjustment,
and misunderstanding.

As a business consultant advising corporations upon their major
objectives and policies, I attend several times each week conferences
during which men are discussed for promotion, transfer to new work or
new territory, salary adjustments, and sometimes demotion. The business
consultant prefers to limit his counsel to such objective matters as
plans and operating policies, but this cannot be done actually, because
all business situations must be resolved into the persons in them. Hence
our discussion is necessarily devoted to men--to what we can do to make
them more effective, to how soon we can promote them safely, to how much
responsibility they can assume, to what they are best fitted for doing,
and the like. During the past fifteen years, I have discussed such lowly
functions as clerkships at $85 a month and such exalted positions as
vice-presidencies at $20,000, with the average running between $4000 and
$10,000 a year.

The judgment of executives is not infallible, and some of the men we
pick are unable to measure up to the increased load we place upon them.
We try to analyze these failures even more carefully than we analyze the
successes. Here is what we find: in the majority of instances, men do
not fail because they do not know enough, or because they are lazy;
they fail because business cannot always depend upon them--they break at
the wrong times. We can find men who know their work and who are capable
of learning the requirements of a better job. We can find plenty of men
who are willing to work, and who will work even harder for the promise
of a better job in the future. But we cannot find enough men whose
emotional mechanism is dependable--at least not in sufficient numbers to
carry on the responsibilities which business would like to place upon
them.

Peculiarly enough, the results of emotional instability are complex, but
the chief cause may be defined simply: trouble at home causes more
emotional upsets, more instability in business, than any other single
factor. By the same token, lack of progress in business causes trouble
at home. No home can be run successfully without a degree of financial
progress, and such progress cannot be made--except by a negligible
few--without harmony at home.

All wives have, by and large, an equal stake with their husbands in
their husbands' material progress. The increased income is a major
consideration, but it is only the beginning in a chain of useful
consequences. Business progress means mental growth, added intelligence
to be applied to both working and living. Personal growth means a fuller
home life, a finer environment in which to bring up children, an
opportunity to become a respected member of the community. Business
progress means greater responsibility, and this breeds the ability to
take on still more responsibility, both at home and in business.
Progress eventually brings more leisure, more culture, and more of the
other refinements of living. Progress is accelerating, feeding upon and
multiplying itself.

No one would deny the truth of all this, yet only a searching few have
actually created at home the degree of harmony which has been the aim
of this series in _Good Housekeeping's_ course on marriage relations. If
effective contributions from home to the consistent progress of
breadwinners were universal rather than rare, half of our troubles in
finding men for added responsibility would be over. The majority of men
dissipate their energy in _wishing_ and _wanting_, but restrict
themselves to wishing and wanting the _result_, rather than the _cause_.
These insist that they want to better their situations, but insist also
that business is a thing apart, something to be shut in the office,
something which need not be understood or supported at home, and
certainly something over which a wife at home has little influence.
These two points of view are not reconcilable; hence everyone loses who
tries to hold to both at once.

If you say to a business executive, "Business is a thing apart," he will
point out at once that your theory is true only in the least important
jobs. The management does not worry much about the home environment of
the beginner upon whom no real responsibility rests, but it frequently
goes to unbelievable ends to get its more important employees back onto
the track if they have lost their heads over a home problem. Again,
business does this for no humanitarian reasons; it takes this attitude
because its employees produce better where there is harmony at home.

The capable, intelligent, and progressive worker is almost invariably
married to a capable, intelligent, and progressive woman. Each acts and
reacts upon the other. Men are not so versatile that they can fill $5000
jobs during the day and then go home to become husbands of $1500 women
in the evening. Neither are women so versatile that they will remain in
contented harmony with husbands who are not their mental equals. Some
look negatively at the problem, feeling that "I could have done better
if I had had the advantages of so-and-so." The facts are that these
envied couples were growing up together, keeping pace mentally, long
before the promotion came which is given the credit for their present
condition.

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