On this point most men and women never seem to agree. The man gets impatient over the constant demand for his attention. He thinks it unreasonable and childish. Intent upon his own struggle he is apt to think her affairs are minor matters. He thinks his wife makes mountains out of molehills and lacks a sense of proportion. He forgets that the devotion of the husband is the woman's anchor to windward, her grip on safety,--that his success and struggle are hers only in so far as he and she are intimate and lover-like. And women, even those who trust their husbands absolutely so far as physical loyalty goes, jealously watch them for the appearance of boredom, or lack of interest, for the falling off of the lover's spirit and feeling.
After marriage the rivalry of men expresses itself in business more than in love. Even where a woman does not fear another woman as a rival she fears the rivalry of business,--and with reason. So she craves attention, sympathy, as well as the dull love of everyday life. She ought to have it; it is her recompense for her lot, for her married life, her smaller interests. Now and then some great man intent upon a great work has some excuse for absorption in that work; for the great majority of men there is no such excuse. Their own affairs are also minor and are no more important than those of their wives. Fair play demands that the women they have immured in a home have a prior claim to their company, in at least the majority of the leisure hours. If in the time to come the home alters and a woman who continues to work marries a man who works, and they meet only at night, then it will be ethical for each to go his or her way. Marriage at present must mean the giving up of freedom for the man as well as for the woman, in the interests of justice and the race.
In medicine we prescribe bitter tonics which have the property of increasing appetite and vigor. For the husband of every woman there is this bit of advice; sympathy and attention constitute a sweet tonic, which if judiciously administered is of incomparable power and efficiency.
THE FUTURE OF WOMAN, THE HOME, AND MARRIAGE
No true sportsman ever prophesies. For the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the prophet. If he is right, he can brag the rest of his days of his seer-like vision. If he is wrong, no one takes the trouble to reproach or mock him.