Don'ts for Wives

Sunday we had dinner with my favorite family from church. They fed us delicious wurst and entertained us with amusing stories and sent me home with this book, which they had on hand for the speech at their daughter's wedding.



It is full of helpful advice for the newly married woman.

Advice such as:

Don't let your husband sharpen lead pencils all over your drawing-room carpet. He will be none the happier for it, and the carpet will suffer as well as the maid's temper.

Don't persist in having mushrooms on the table when you know they always make your husband ill. They may be your favourite dish, but is it worth it?

Don't brood; that way madness lies. Half the brooding and half the ill-humour in the world are due to foolish feeding. The woman who broods . . . doesn't have a decent repast at midday; or perhaps she eats too much meat. Three, or even two, meat meals a day tend to make the world look very black to the middle aged.

This is going up on the shelf right next to The Fascinating Girl.