Husbandman

“ O my Lord, we have only one to depend upon—the husband is the object of the wife's thoughts, of her understanding, her study, her acquisition, her meeting, her society; in short, this jewel—the husband is all to a virtuous woman. O thou letter! ”

“ The much lov'd husband, of a happy wife.
To him, whose constant passion found the art
To win a stubborn, and ungratefull heart;
And to the World, by tend' rest proof discovers
They err, who say that husbands can't be lovers. ”

“ These, then, are all the elements of knowledge which you should possess, for the conjugal custom house insists simply in being able by a rapid but searching examination to know the moral and physical condition of all who enter or leave your house—all, that is, who have seen or intend to see your wife. A husband is, like a spider, set at the centre of an invisible net, and receives a shock from the least fool of a fly who touches it, and from a distance, hears, judges and sees what is either his prey or his enemy. ”

“ And when the young man is seasoned for it, how happy she will be, poor little thing!—a ripe husband, ready to fall from the tree, fit to be put away in the apple-loft! What happiness! a good husband, who the day after his marriage will piously place his wife in a niche and light a taper in front of her; then take his hat and go off to spend elsewhere a scrap of youth left by chance at the bottom of his pocket. ”

“ Has she a call to be a wife, who takes a journey [Pg 309] for pleasure, leaving her husband to toil in a close office, and “have an eye, when at home, to the servants and children?”
Has she a call to be a wife, who values an unrumpled collar or crinoline more than a conjugal kiss?
Has she a call to be a wife, to whom a good husband’s society is not the greatest of earthly blessings, and a house full of rosy children its best furnishing, and prettiest adornment? ”

“ Don't you know a wife shouldn't keep secrets from her husband? A warm-blooded, affectionate husband, to boot." He bent down, knocking aside her flailing arms, and pulled her closer to him. "Better tell your husband where the book is, Cuddles!" ”

“ The husband should reason like the judge; there are only three people in society whom he can suspect when seeking the lover of his wife. LXXX. A lover is never in the wrong. LXXXI. The lover of a married woman says to her: “Madame, you have need of rest. You have to give an example of virtue to your children. You have sworn to make your husband happy, and although he has some faults—he has fewer than I have—he is worthy of your esteem. ”

“ Let the husband look upon the object in whose sacred care he has "garnered up his heart," and on the little innocent who draws the fountain of its life from her pure breast, recalling, as he gazes on one and the other, the freshness and the strength of his early and his ardent love ”

“ Her husband will be to her the object of all her care, solicitude and affection. She will see nothing but by him, and through him. If he is a man of sense and virtue, she will sympathize in his sorrows, divert his fatigue, and share his pleasures. If she becomes the property of a churlish or negligent husband, she will suit his taste also, for she will not long survive his unkindness."—SIR WALTER SCOTT—Waverley. ”

“ The charms that helped to catch the Husband, are generally laid by, one after another, 'till the Lady grows a downright Wife, and then runs crying to her Mother, because she has transform'd her Lover into a downright Husband. ”

“ Ah Wife! says the Husband, If People that Rise Early and come Home Late, and are all Day out of your Sight, cannot be Quiet for ye, what a Case is your Poor Husband in, that must Spend his Whole Life in your Company. ”

“ And under no circumstances does the husband perform all the labor resulting from a marriage. That he may be a true man, a father and a citizen, it is necessary that he have a home; and in the care of the home, in the bringing-forth and the bringing-up of the family, in the constant demands upon her love and sympathy, the wife performs a never-ceasing multitude of duties that tax her heart and her body in every direction,—a labor of love in comparison with which her husband’s daily routine over his “entries” or his “orders” is a trifling drain of vitality. ”

“ Has that man a call to be a husband, who, when the rosy maiden he married is transformed by too early an introduction to the cares and trials of maternity, into a feeble, confirmed invalid, turns impatiently from the restless wife’s sick-room, to sun himself in the perfidious smile of one whom he would blush to name in that wife’s pure ears? ”

“ The wife or the husband feels that there is no longer any need of wooing each other. All of which leads to woe, woe, woe! The wife should keep her whole body so sweet and clean that her husband can kiss her from top to toe, if he wants to—and the chances are that he will want to, if she so keeps herself! ”

“ It is the first duty of a husband to support his wife.”
“Old-fashioned husbands, yes—but not modern ones. Lots of men marry to be supported nowadays. How on earth could I support the man I love?”
“You are not without talents, my dear.” ”

“ They represent a pair of beggars—husband and wife—dressed in rags. The husband is the filthier of the two; it is vice which has brought him so low; the wife is unhappy and degraded only through the misdeeds of her husband.
They are called the gardener and the gardener's wife, and they pretend it is their duty to guard and care for the sacred cabbage. The husband has several names, each with a meaning. ”

“ Before I proceed in the history of the married part of my life, you must allow me to give as impartial an account of my husband as I have done of myself. He was a jolly, handsome fellow, as any woman need wish for a companion; tall and well made ”

“ Let the husband keep his head, and THE WIFE UTTERLY LOSE HERS, throwing it to the winds, to be wholly swept away by the whirlwind of her passion; feeling free, delighting, to let it go, go, go, no one cares where! ”

“ Eu.But if ever that Thought comes into your Mind again, first of all consider with yourself, what an insignificant Figure a Woman makes when she is parted from her Husband. It is the greatest Glory of a Matron, to be obedient to her Husband. This Nature dictates, and it is the Will of God, that the Woman should wholly depend upon her Husband: Only think, as it really is, he is your Husband, you cannot have another. ”

“ For whom do children cry out in the night when they get frightened at a bad dream? Aye, to whom does the husband go when he has a business trouble too great or too delicate for outside ears? We, the men, are heads of the household in name, but you, O wives! are the heads of the household in fact, and it is your business to take your husband with you into the kingdom of God, and see that house prepared for heaven. ”

“ The dreamy, distraught, yet unembittered existence of the husband, revelling in the visions of the Platonic philosophy—the anxiety of the father and his friends—the ardent, the pure and chivalric love, with the uncompromising devotion and soothing attentions of the wife—are pictures whose merit will not fail to be appreciated by all whose good opinion is of value. ”

“ The husband, scandalised and offended by the rejection and refusal of the wife, will seek a substitute more complaisant; and the spouse also may “by the decree of Destiny” happen to meet the right man, the man for whom and for whom only every woman will sweep the floor. And then adieu to prudence and virtue, honour and fair fame. ”

“ Why, if I must tell you, you little curiosity box, I did; you know how powerfully my husband is hung, and loving him as I do, it is impossible to undergo his powerful and lascivious embraces without feeling all one's libidinous passions stirred up within me, but even while in his possession, my dear boy, I thought of your young charms, and the fierce delights we had enjoyed together last night. ”

“ He can speak of other wives without restraint,—for she knows he has others,—and her education has taught her, that they deserve her respect in proportion as they contribute to her husband's happiness. The children of her husband are admitted at all times and seasons, without restraint or prejudice; she loves them next to her own, because they are her husband's. ”

“ Monsieur," said she, "we endeavour to assist our spouses in every way in our power;—it is our only pleasure; their cares are our cares, and their interests are ours; and, if it is our calamity to become widows, and we meet with another good husband, we do the best we can for him also." ”

“ Moreover, the more impetuous and passionate a husband shows himself, the less will a woman dare to employ this expedient; but a husband caught in this snare will never have anything to say to his stern better-half, when the maid, giving evidence of the fault she has committed, is sent into the country with an infant and a dowry. ”

“ After all, a husband is very much like a house or a horse. ”

“ Another common theme is that of the girl who refuses to marry any other man than the one, perhaps a beggar, whom her father had jokingly suggested as a possible husband for her. The prevailing idea in this is that the image once formed in a maiden's mind of her future husband is, in truth, already her husband, and she must be faithful to him. ”

“ The wife who comes to see the husband who has been taken away from her, the husband who creeps in towards a bed in which, so small and girlish and white, she lies waiting for him? The flowers, the little cheerfulnesses, and, behind it all, the doubt, the wondering, the ache, the sense of injustice. ”

“ What We See in Our Mate. The many handsome men whom we have met, and who are mated to homely wives, the many wives we have observed, mated to impossible husbands, and whose affection for their unprepossessing life partner is genuine and in no way dictated by sordid considerations, the many triangles we know of, in which a very inferior lover or mistress is preferred to an admittedly superior husband or wife, are evidence of the involuntary, nay compulsory, character of the love choice. ”

“ Let your nest be soft, let your presence be felt in all its thousand trifles. Put a little of yourself into the ordering of everything. Be artistic, delicate, and refined—you can do so without effort—and let your husband perceive in everything that surrounds him, from the lace on the curtains to the perfume that you use, a wish on your part to please him. ”

“ Sir W. I’ll have my house in future conducted as a gentleman’s should be, and I will no longer suffer my wife to make herself the object of ridicule to all her servants. So I’ll give up the folly of wishing to be thought a tender husband, for the real honour of being found a respectable one. ”

“ In my cynical mood this afternoon I cannot but observe that where the wives are in tears the husbands are all smiles and jokes; whilst a blithe face on the part of a wife means a grim and melancholy countenance on the part of her spouse. ”

“ A light word between husbands and wives sometimes goes unexplained, and the rift between them widens through life. I know some houses where the wife enters at one door and the husband at another; where if they meet on the stairs, they do not salute each other. Under the same roof they have lived for years and have not spoken. ”

“ But while this husband of ours does not give up his old friends of his own sex, nor abjure all the manly pursuits and recreations so dear to his soul in his state of bachelorhood, he will take care that they do not absorb an undue share of his leisure, but will prefer home and wife to them all, and let her know it. ”

“ More and more the people are growing into a responsiveness to the sacredness of the marriage relation. The husband has increased in knowledge regarding his duty to his wife; the wife sees better her relation to her husband; the parents more clearly perceive what is possible and proper with reference to their children; and, therefore, we can claim thousands of homes which are sources of refinement, of love, and of purest pleasure. ”

“ When wives dress up and put their best foot forward to please their own households, as they do for outsiders; when the husband dons his best coat and pantaloons, boots and hat, cane and gloves as often and readily, to walk out with his own wife, as—when away—he does to do the same for somebody else's, the world will be a good deal better off than it is to-day. ”

“ If you wish them to live for your comfort and happiness, they have an equal right to expect you to live and sacrifice for their comfort and happiness. Almost any promising bride may soon be made an ill-tempered wife, a discontented homekeeper and an indifferent mother by an improvident, extravagant, selfish and neglectful husband. ”

“ If a tale reaches her ears of a wife who has failed of her duty, or if the public newspapers record a divorce, then she awakens her husband to a sense of his superior happiness, and her own irreproachable virtue. ”

“ I taught husbands to keep inviolate their wedlock, because that which a man punishes in an adulterous wife, God will avenge in an adulterous husband. I exhorted pious wives inwardly to love their husbands, and with awe obey them as masters. ”

“ She has made her own circle of friends now, the young wives of men like her husband, and many of her afternoons are taken up with little rounds of visits, when she is amused by the tittle-tattle of these wives, by their little tales and scandals, by their gossips about servants, frocks and theatres.
She, too, has social ambitions like her husband. Her evenings At Home are agreeable adventures when she is pleased with the homage of her husband’s friends. ”

“ The burning magnificence of an overpowering lifelong love is not given to many, and a husband who desires lasting and mutual happiness in his marriage, will carefully study his wife, observe how far she has a normal rhythm, and in what respects she possesses peculiar personal traits. ”

“ The husband becomes a pedagogue, or, if you like, a professor, and love perishes under the rod which, sooner or later, gives pain; for a young and handsome wife, at once discreet and laughter-loving, will not accept any superiority above that with which she is endowed by nature. ”