Agrarian Nation: —1877—Rules For Making A Wife Happy

28 November 2011

—1877—
Rules For Making A Wife Happy

#68

Rules For Making a Wife Happy

—Treat your wife as politely and kindly as when you were wooing her.
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—Never find fault with her in a cross tone and manner, and especially before other people.
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—If your dinner does not suit you, do not spoil her appetite by scolding about it at the time, but give whatever suggestions are needed after dinner.
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—Do not humiliate her by groaning over every item of household expense as if she was extravagent. Either retrench in superfluities, or pay for them without murmuring.
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—Share your pleasures and your cares with her, and show that you value her society and her advice.
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—Do not speak lightly of her caress and fatigues, but sympathize in her troubles, whether small or great.
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—Try to gratify her fancies, such as a flower garden, or conveniences about her work. She will be reminded of your consideration or neglect many times every day by these little things.
[Thomas’s Farmer's Almanac]

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I will post "Rules For Making a Husband Happy" from 1877 in an upcoming Agrarian Nation Excerpt.

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4 comments:

the canned quilter said...: A timeless post that many husbands today could still learn from : ); 28 November, 2011 08:38
Anonymous said...: What a SUPER picture! I absolutely love it. You can see how hard those people have worked by the look in their eyes, and their inherent pride in that work. My husband (by gum, he's pretty good, as I read through that list!!) and I trade off nights reading the "Little Britches" series by Ralph Moody to our 9-year-old son at bedtimes. I heartily recommend that series for teaching children the value of hard outdoor work, patience, and sheer stick-to-it-iveness! My point here is that the pictured couple remind me strongly of some of the characters in that series.

Thanks as always for brightening my day.

Kristin; 28 November, 2011 13:34
Herrick Kimball said...: The Little Britches books are great. I once blogged about the Little Britches book at this link:
Two Kinds of Men

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The picture of the farm couple is from the Life magazine archives; 28 November, 2011 21:17
Unknown said...: I loved this post, and read it out to my husband, who must have listened, as the other night AFTER dinner he told me that he didn't really like it (normally this would have been said during dinner, not that it ever offends me, I either agree or don't care because I like it). Anyway, I've been waiting for the "rules for making a husband happy" as I expect it to be equally insightful. As always, I enjoy your blog!; 29 December, 2011 20:39

Welcome To Agrarian Nation

How did people in rural New England live and work before electricity and tractors arrived on the scene? This web site will seek to answer that question by looking at the old agricultural writings of 1825 to 1900.

Join me on a historical journey of discovery into America's agrarian past. We will get advice from the old-timers about the art of farming, gardening, and living a good life.

Like archeologists studying an ancient culture, we will look at excerpts from original-source documents (primarily almanacs and agricultural journals) to better understand how people thought and lived their lives in pre-grid America.

Herrick Kimball
hckimball@bci.net

"From the beginning it was always possible to find farmers who were intuitively suspicious of the industrialization of agriculture. Perhaps they objected to the increased authority of suppliers and experts. Perhaps they felt the discord between machinery and living creatures. Perhaps they had a rational fear of toxic chemicals. Perhaps they disliked paying cash for energy and fertility that they had previously received in kind from their farms and their good work. Among at least a few, for whatever reasons, there was a persistent distrust."
—Wendell Berry

This field, which when the owner took it over eight years previously was barren, now was bursting with life. As I passed alongside of it on the cart, getting a good view of it as a whole, I often thought of the latent power that lay there till released and channelled by man. Nothing to see on that former dry and barren field, save tangled yellowish grass: yet holding within it the force to throw upward what I now beheld. A farmer is a liberator of the energy in the earth, ceaselessly creating what is good, and adding on a vast scale to the beauty of the world.
.....

John Stewart Collis
The Worm Forgives The Plough

"Through World War II, farm life in my region (and, I think, nearly everywhere) rested solidly upon the garden, dairy, poultry flock, and meat animals that fed the farm’s family. Especially in hard times farm families, and their farms, survived by means of their subsistence economy. The industrial program, on the contrary, suggested that it was “uneconomic” for a farm family to produce its own food; the effort and the land would be better applied to commercial production. The result is utterly strange in human experience: farm families that buy everything they eat at the store."

Wendell Berry
(Renewing Husbandry)

A love for the soil and all the pursuits of outdoor life is one of the most healthful signs in a people. Our broad and diversified land affords abundant opportunity for the gratification of every rural taste, and those who form such tastes will never complain that life is losing its zest. Other pleasures pall with time and are satiated. We outgrow them. But every spring is a new revelation, every summer a fresh, original chapter of experience, and every autumn a fruition of hopes as well as of seeds and buds. Nothing can conduce more to happiness and prosperity than multitudes of rural homes. In such abodes you will not find Socialists, Nihilists, and other hare-brained reformers who seek to improve the world by ignoring nature and common sense. Possession of the soil makes a man conservative, while he, at the same time, is conserved.

E.P. Roe