Handy Hints for Husbands

Hello, honey, I'm home!

WHERE would women be without their husbands? Probably living it up with a toy boy in the Bahamas, that's where. You can but dream...

In actual fact, there's not much about The Man I would change but I wish I'd had this handy little booklet called Don'ts For Husbands (written by Blance Ebbutt in 1913) before we started living together. There's also one for women called Don'ts For Wives.

It included very handy hints like this one: "Don't stoop, even if your work is desk-work. Your wife wants to see you straight and broad-chested." Wise words if ever I heard them. 

As are these: "Don’t sharpen pencils all over the house. It does not improve either the carpets or the servants’ tempers to find pencil sharpenings all over the floors." 

The times I've told the dearly beloved: "For goodness sake, consider the servants!"  Good servants are so hard to find these days. I really don't want to be faffed with finding a new parlour maid and training her up to my exacting standards, not at my time of life.

Then there was:  "Don’t sneer at your wife’s cookery or bridge-playing or singing." Unless you want the cookery all over your head, sneering is definitely out.

Here are a few more handy hints for the dearly beloved to consider:

• Don't increase the necessary work of the house by leaving all your things lying about in different places. If you are not tidy by nature, at least be thoughtful for others.
• Don't take it out on your poor wife every time you have a headache or a cold. It isn't her fault, and she has enough to do in nursing you, without having to put with ill-humour into the bargain.
• Don’t try to regulate every detail of your wife’s life. Even a wife is an individual, and must be allowed some scope. [Take a minute to think about that line: EVEN a wife is an individual (!). You think...?]
• Don’t try to “drive” your wife. You will find it much easier to “lead” her.
• Don’t increase the work of the house by leaving all your things lying about in different places. If you are not tidy by nature, at least be thoughtful for others.

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