e down to breakfast in the morning (for many resistances are
voluntarily thrown off in the night) you will have a pleasanter feeling
toward the trying member, and it comes so spontaneously that you will
be surprised yourself at the absence of the strain of resistance in you.

Believe me when I say this: the yielding in the non-essentials,
singularly enough, gives one strength to refuse to yield in principles.
But we must always remember that if we want to find real peace, while
we refuse to yield in our own principles so long as we believe them to
be true, we must be entirely willing that others should differ from us
in belief.

CHAPTER VI

_Irritable Husbands_

SUPPOSE your husband got impatient and annoyed with you because you did
not seem to enter heartily into the interests of his work and
sympathize with its cares and responsibilities and soothe him out of
the nervous harassments. Would you not perhaps feel a little sore that
he seemed to expect all from you and to give nothing in return? I know
how many women will say that is all very well, but the husband and
father should feel as much interest in the home and the children as the
wife and mother does. That is, of course, true up to a certain point,
always in general, and when his help is really necessary in particular.
But a man cannot enter into the details of his wife's duties at home
any more than a woman can enter into the details of her husband's
duties at his office.

Then, again, my readers may say: "But a woman's nervous system is more
sensitive than a man's; she needs help and consolation. She needs to
have some one on whom she can lean." Now the answer to that will
probably be surprising, but an intelligent understanding and
comprehension of it would make a very radical difference in the lives
of many men and women who have agreed to live together for life--for
better and for worse.

Now the truth is man's nervous system is quite as sensitive as a
woman's, but the woman's temptation to emotion makes her appear more
sensitive, and her failure to control her emotions ultimately increases
the sensitiveness of her nerves so that they are more abnormal than her
husband's. Even that is not always true The other day a woman sat in
tears and distress telling of the hardness of heart, the restlessness,
the irritability, the thoughtlessness, the unkindness of her husband.
Her face was drawn with suffering. She insisted that she was not
complaining