The Colored Wife Beautiful
Married life is a co-partnership and the wife and husband pledge to mutual help, when they enter into the marriage contract.
If in their girlhood wives had only studied men instead of giving up all their time to so-called “loving and courting,” there would not be so much dissatisfaction, heart-ache and complaint after marriage. A girl should try to select a man with control over himself, over his voice, his emotions, even the angle of his hat, and then she should practice control herself, until the two dispositions have become adjusted to each other.
The ignorant girl who marries is full of trust and inexperienced notions. The disillusionments of life seem to come too fast to suit the majority. Many young wives immediately become discouraged or desperate and fall out of the ranks by the wayside of the matrimonial highway, without trying to live up to their end of the contract, or even respecting their own vows at the altar.
“True loving is giving the best within us.” When we have company we give to them the best food, the best linen, the best china and silver-ware that we own. Yet to those we are pledged to love and cherish we give anything, and wonder why in return we have failed in receiving love and all that goes with it.
A divorce is a terrible “something.” It is a blight to children and often means their ruin or the blasting of their future. If a woman has children she should try to endure her lot until they are grown. In the meantime she may prepare herself for a beautiful maturity and an entrance into the commercial world or another field of activity.
Of course, if one’s husband deserts her there is nothing else to do but let him go, but if he clings to her and the home, she should use the protection that his name gives to her until she is sure that she can buffet the world alone.
In the larger field of public life a woman without the protection of a husband’s name has a hard lot if she has physical or other attractions. Widows of both kinds are always under suspicion. If one is lighthearted and enjoys even innocent pleasure, she may be called a “good timer,” or “fast,” and this may injure her advancement in the arena of business life.
The protection of the name of any kind of a man, bad, no account, or cruel, is better than the suffering from cruel suspicions which often blight the efforts of a sensitive woman, who perhaps in her loneliness has turned for sympathy this way and that way, until she concludes that if she suffers in name she may as well be “in the game,” and chooses the wrong way.
If a woman has money it is quite different. People fawn upon her and she is less liable to snubbing if Dame Gossip should assail her.
The first duty of a wife is to keep healthy. Even if she is ailing she must not complain unless through mental suggestion she desires to increase her ailments, real or imaginary. She must earnestly endeavor to discover the cause of the alleged ailment and remove it.
The colored wife beautiful of today must be a composite woman because the colored man of today is many sided. They call woman a “creature of moods” but most men may easily be called susceptible and changeable creatures, when it comes to the attractions of the opposite sex.
Today it may be a pretty face which allures him; tomorrow a fine conversationalist, or a musical person may attract. The next day a woman with tremendous vitality may charm him. So he wanders, but he does not intend to stray. One or several streaks in his make-up have been satisfied, but his wife still stands upon her pedestal as the woman who bears his name.
The up-to-date wife realizes his susceptibility (as a man) and is prepared. She bides her time when like the prodigal, he will surely return, perhaps mentally and morally purified and a wiser, if a sadder man.
If a woman loves her husband and desires to keep him for herself and family, she must train herself for her many varied duties including attractiveness, which is a real duty.
If she thinks that some other woman has her husband’s affection, her thoughts help her to make this so. If she voices the suspicion she fertilizes the soil and aids the growth or she may crystallize and give form to rumor.
Even if there is ground for such a suspicion the up-to-date wife would not admit it to herself or voice the fact.
“Man’s love is of man’s life a part, ’tis woman’s whole existence.”
The inexperienced wives forget that they cannot satisfy every mood of a man without study or effort, unless they are remarkably gifted. Many a wife has neglected her mind, body and powers and when some woman with developed powers enters her marriage orbit, she flies off at a tangent, admits defeat and gets a divorce without putting forth an effort to win back the husband who is often worth saving.
It is humiliating to admit, “I have lost my husband!” A wife should never admit it, even in thought.
Many a man does not intend to stray and loves his wife but he has been carried off his feet just for the moment.
There are Keeley cures to save men, why not husband cures to save homes, especially those with children whose futures are at stake.
I know several colored women who have had good ground for doubting their husband’s fidelity who have never allowed the men to know that they have doubted them.
One wife made a study of “the woman in the case” and threw her and her husband together in her home until the man was satiated. In the meantime she studied herself and the woman to see what it was that attracted her husband. Then she went into training for the match—war—if it should come to that—in attractiveness, and she won without telling her secret.
If a wife will give a man time and will play the attractive game as she did before marriage, her husband will soon turn his face homeward, and will wonder what the other charm was.
Many men are attracted by youth alone and after youth has flown they are not interested. A wife should study the fancies of her husband if she desires to hold him, and then begin work upon herself, to hold her youthful looks.
Wives must prepare for the dangerous age which they say comes to a woman between thirty-five and forty-five, and to a man from forty to fifty, when both are accused of being attracted to younger faces, and when they do foolish things. A wife must strengthen herself, lest she stray, and cultivate her own attractive powers lest her husband should incline to stray.
A man does not age as quickly as a woman. At fifty a woman is supposed to be on her decline while a man is in his prime at fifty.
It is a woman’s own fault if, at forty the lines in her face turn down and if her hair and teeth are all gone. If she is a “nagger” the reflection will appear in her face. If she has permitted household cares to swamp her, and reflect themselves in her face and body, she has no one to blame but herself.
Many a woman has attracted her husband through her singing, conversation, or other accomplishments and after marriage has permitted these to decline, and has not lived up to the ideal that she gave him before marriage.
A wife should ask herself if she is living up to the ideal she suggested before she married, or if she is a disappointment, before she questions her husband’s conduct.
Some wives think that their morality in wifehood is all sufficient. A woman may boast of her “virtue” until doom’s day, but “if her soul is small and her heart stingy” her example is not worthy of imitation—for she is only good to herself. She has no way of proving the ownership of the “virtue of virtues.” It takes many virtues to make one “good,” in the real sense of the word.
A colored wife should not be discontented without good cause nor should she complain of monotony when she may choose so many helpful diversions, and may help to make others happy.
Every colored wife who has not borne children, or a wife who has lost children owes a duty to the children of others.
In fact, these owe a greater debt to posterity than the mother. Such women should not live for themselves alone, lest they canker. Contact with youth infuses youthful thoughts and enthusiasm, and keeps a woman’s heart young, and if her heart is young her face will reflect this mental attitude.
There are thousands of children with living mothers who still need “mothering.” One may work out her own youth and beauty culture while “mothering” a little one. It is worth a trial as a youth stimulant.
There are four great laws given to a wife:
“Brace up! Brush up! Clean up! Look up!”