Don'ts for Wives.

How domestic Peace and Happiness Is to Be Secured.

A Few Gentle Hints For Ladies Who Know Not How to Treat Their Husbands

Some of the Rights Due to Man's Station and Dignity.

["Ottawa Republican, 07 Jan 1885, page 1]

Don't disturb your husband while he is reading his morning or evening paper by asking foolish questions. He may be only reading the latest scandal or divorce suit, but he is just as much interested as though it were foreign news or market reports. Be patient and when he comes across anything he thinks you can comprehend, perhaps, he may read it to you.

Don't communicate unpleasant news or aska favor before eating. The heart is not easily touched when the stomach is empty.

Don't ever tell a man he is good looking. Some other woman probably will some time, and in that case he won't know that her opinion concurs with yours. He carries a pocket hand glass now, and he will shortly become addicted to pajamas.

Don't put the morning paper at the bottom fo the pile, and don't have more than a dozen different places for the button hook.

Don't impose upon your husband just because he is good enough to assist you a little in your house work. Don't leave the stove handle in the red-hot stove, and don't ask him to empty the ash-hod. Draw a line on the ash-hod, and don't run a free horse to death.

Don't gather up all his receipts and notes that he has put carefully away on the sitting room table and tuck them away on the sitting room table - and tuck them in the fire the moment his back is turned.

Don't trade off all his old clothes for a pair of china dogs and then tell him about it.

Don't monopolize every hook in the closet. Graciously tender him one nail for his very own - and then, in mercy, hang your "Mother Hubbard," your pelerine, your shopping bag, and your bonnet some other place.

Don't be inexplicit in giving directions. When you ask him to go up stairs for your portemounale, tell him it is either on the table, or in the further corner of the left hand side of the upper bureau drawer, or in the pocket of your brown dress in the closet. He will find no trouble in finding it if you can tell him just were it is, especially the pocket.

Don't ask him where he has been the moment he enters the house, or where he is going if he starts out for a walk before breakfast. It nettles him, and men hate to have such pointed questions sprung upon them. Besides that, we live under a free flag.

Don't ask him to walk the floor with the baby half the night. A man who tramps in lustriously around a billiard table three nights in the week or buys an admission ticket to the opera can't be expected to be on duty at home the other three nights. Have mercy on him and give the man an opportunity to recuperate.

Don't waste your breath in useless vituperation against his favorite chum. Cultivate the chum yourself - ostensibly - when your husband is not around, and matters will assume a different aspect.

Don't put pins in your curl papers or let your crimping pins dangle on your forehead. They are abominations and feminine implements of warfare that men despise.

Don't leave hair in the comb or your neck curls where they will stick to his hair brush. Don't put a long hair on the soap or in his tooth brush - purposely.

Don't mend his hosiery with coarse cotton having knots in it larger than a pea.

Don't be unreasonably vexed if he is not ready for church as soon as your are. If he doesn't get ready till the bells begin to ring, you musn't expect the same result as with yourself, who had the whole morning before you.

Don't scold him because he leaves ashes in his pipe. One of the privileges of a married man is to leave an old pipe full of ashes in just the position to empty the contents on the window-sill or the mantel piece the moment it is touched.

Don't indulge in flights of temper when your husband suggests how his mother did. If he objects to ahving eggs boiled in the tea-kettle, and prefers them washed previous to cooking, endeavor to please him by indulging him in his fancies. In the meantime bring your sons up as carefully as you can, and when they are married, you yourself will doubtless be held up as an example of virtue; and revenge is sweet.

Don't be too prodigal in the use of kindling-wood. There is no fruit of his toil that man guards as jealously as he does his kindling-wood. He would fain put it where thieves break not through and steal. So just because you have free access to it. Don't burn up enough to last a week in one day.

Don't parley for the last word in a discussion. The sooner you discover that it is a pleasure you must forego, and make up your mind to relinquish it entirely, the sooner you have a chance for peace in the family, and a long life of fireside contentment.