The Young Man's Guide, William Andrus Alcott [best business books of all time txt] 📗

And, is this being unreasonably harsh or severe upon woman? By no means. It arises from an ardent desire to promote the happiness, and to add to the natural, legitimate, and salutary influence of the female sex. The tendency of this advice is to promote the preservation of their health; to prolong the duration of their beauty; to cause them to be loved to the last day of their lives; and to give them, during the whole of those lives, that weight and consequence, and respect, of which laziness would render them wholly unworthy.

9. FRUGALITY.

This means the contrary of extravagance. It does not mean stinginess; it does not mean pinching; but it means an abstaining from all unnecessary expenditure, and all unnecessary use of goods of any and of every sort. It is a quality of great importance, whether the rank in life be high or low.

Some people are, indeed, so rich, they have such an over-abundance of money and goods, that how to get rid of them would, to a spectator, seem to be their only difficulty. How many individuals of fine estates, have been ruined and degraded by the extravagance of their wives! More frequently by their own extravagance, perhaps; but, in numerous instances, by that of those whose duty it is to assist in upholding their stations by husbanding their fortunes.

If this be the case amongst the opulent, who have estates to draw upon, what must be the consequences of a want of frugality in the middle and lower ranks of life? Here it must be fatal, and especially among that description of persons whose wives have, in many cases, the receiving as well as the expending of money. In such a case, there wants nothing but extravagance in the wife to make ruin as inevitable as the arrival of old age.

To obtain security against this is very difficult; yet, if the lover be not quite blind, he may easily discover a propensity towards extravagance. The object of his addresses will, nine times out of ten, never be the manager of a house; but she must have her dress, and other little matters under her control. If she be costly in these; if, in these, she step above her rank, or even to the top of it; if she purchase all she is able to purchase, and prefer the showy to the useful, the gay and the fragile to the less sightly and more durable, he may be sure that the disposition will cling to her through life. If he perceive in her a taste for costly food, costly furniture, costly amusements: if he find her love of gratification to be bounded only by her want of means; if he find her full of admiration of the trappings of the rich, and of desire to be able to imitate them, he may be pretty sure that she will not spare his purse, when once she gets her hand into it; and, therefore, if he can bid adieu to her charms, the sooner he does it, the better.

Some of the indications of extravagance in a lady are ear-rings, broaches, bracelets, buckles, necklaces, diamonds, (real or mock,) and nearly all the ornaments which women put upon their persons.

These things may be more proper in palaces, or in scenes resembling palaces; but, when they make their appearance amongst people in the middle rank of life, where, after all, they only serve to show that poverty in the parties which they wish to disguise; when the mean, tawdry things make their appearance in this rank of life, they are the sure indications of a disposition that will always be straining at what it can never attain.

To marry a girl of this disposition is really self-destruction. You never can have either property or peace. Earn her a horse to ride, she will want a gig: earn the gig, she will want a chariot: get her that, she will long for a coach and four: and, from stage to stage, she will torment you to the end of her or your days; for, still there will be somebody with a finer equipage than you can give her; and, as long as this is the case, you will never have rest. Reason would tell her, that she could never be at the top; that she must stop at some point short of that; and that, therefore, all expenses in the rivalship are so much thrown away. But, reason and broaches and bracelets seldom go in company. The girl who has not the sense to perceive that her person is disfigured and not beautified by parcels of brass and tin, or even gold and silver, as well to regret, if she dare not oppose the tyranny of absurd fashions, is not entitled to a full measure of the confidence of any individual.

10. PERSONAL NEATNESS.

There never yet was, and there never will be sincere and ardent love, of long duration, where personal neatness is wholly neglected. I do not say that there are not those who would live peaceably and even contentedly in these circumstances. But what I contend for is this: that there never can exist, for any length of time, ardent affection, in any man towards a woman who neglects neatness, either in her person, or in her house affairs.

Men may be careless as to their own person; they may, from the nature of their business, or from their want of time to adhere to neatness in dress, be slovenly in their own dress and habits; but, they do not relish this in their wives, who must still have charms; and charms and neglect of the person seldom go together. I do not, of course, approve of it even in men.

We may, indeed, lay it down as a rule of almost universal application, that supposing all other things to be equal, he who is most guilty of personal neglect; will be the most ignorant and the most vicious. Why there should be, universally, a connection between slovenliness, ignorance, and vice, is a question I have no room in this work to discuss.

I am well acquainted with one whole family who neglect their persons from principle. The gentleman, who is a sort of new light in religious concerns, will tell you that the true Christian should 'slight the hovel, as beneath his care.' But there is a want of intelligence, and even common refinement in the family, that certainly does not and cannot add much to their own happiness, or recommend religion—aside from the fact that it greatly annoys their neighbors. And though the head of the family observes many external duties with Jewish strictness, neither he nor any of its members are apt to bridle their tongues, or remember that on ordinary as well as special occasions they are bound to 'do all to the glory of God.' As to the connection of mind with matter—I mean the dependence of mind and soul on body, they are wholly ignorant.

It is not dress that the husband wants to be perpetual: it is not finery; but cleanliness in every thing. Women generally dress enough, especially when they go abroad. This occasional cleanliness is not the thing that a husband wants: he wants it always; in-doors as well as out; by night as well as by day; on the floor as well as on the table; and, however he may complain about the trouble and the 'expense' of it, he would complain more if it were neglected.

The indications of female neatness are, first, a clean skin. The hands and face will usually be clean, to be sure, if there be soap and water within reach; but if on observing other parts of the head besides the face, you make discoveries indicating a different character, the sooner you cease your visits the better. I hope, now, that no young woman who may chance to see this book, will be offended at this, and think me too severe on her sex. I am only telling that which all men think; and, it is a decided advantage to them to be fully informed of our thoughts on the subject. If any one, who reads this, shall find, upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, let her take the hint, and correct the defect.

In the dress, you can, amongst rich people, find little whereon to form a judgment as to cleanliness, because they have not only the dress prepared for them, but put upon them into the bargain. But, in the middle ranks of life, the dress is a good criterion in two respects: first, as to its color; for if the white be a sort of yellow, cleanly hands would have been at work to prevent that. A white-yellow cravat, or shirt, on a man, speaks at once the character of his wife; and, you may be assured, that she will not take with your dress pains which she has never taken with her own.

Then, the manner of putting on the dress, is no bad foundation for judging. If this be careless, and slovenly, if it do not fit properly,—no matter for its mean quality; mean as it may be, it may be neatly and trimly put on—if it be slovenly put on, I say, take care of yourself; for, you will soon find to your cost, that a sloven in one thing, is a sloven in all things. The plainer people, judge greatly from the state of the covering of the ankles; and, if that be not clean and tight, they conclude that the rest is not as it ought to be. Look at the shoes! If they be trodden on one side, loose on the foot, or run down at the heel, it is a very bad sign; and as to going slipshod, though at coming down in the morning, and even before daylight, make up your mind to a rope, rather than live with a slipshod woman.

How much do women lose by inattention to these matters! Men, in general, say nothing about it to their wives, but they think about it; they envy their more lucky neighbors, and in numerous cases, consequences the most serious arise from this apparently trifling cause. Beauty is valuable; it is one of the ties, and a strong one too; but it cannot last to old age; whereas the charm of cleanliness never ends but with life itself. It has been said that the sweetest flowers, when they really become putrid, are the most offensive. So the most beautiful woman, if found with an uncleansed skin, is, in my estimation, the most disagreeable.

11. A GOOD TEMPER.

This is a very difficult thing to ascertain beforehand. Smiles are cheap; they are easily put on for the occasion; and, besides, the frowns are, according to the lover's whim, interpreted into the contrary. By 'good temper,' I do not mean an easy temper, a serenity which nothing disturbs; for that is a mark of laziness. Sullenness, if you be not too blind to perceive it, is a temper to be avoided by all means. A sullen man is bad enough; what, then, must be a sullen woman, and that woman a wife; a constant inmate, a companion day and night! Only think of the delight of setting at the same table, and occupying the same chamber, for a week, without exchanging a word all the while! Very bad to be scolding for such a length of time; but this is far better than 'the sulks.'

But if you have your eyes, and look sharp, you will discover symptoms of this, if it unhappily exist. She will, at some time or other, show it towards some one or other of the family; or, perhaps, towards yourself; and you may be quite sure that, in this respect, marriage will not mend her. Sullenness arises from capricious displeasure not founded in