Chapter 2: How the Home Can Succeed, 1. Maintaining Personal Attractiveness

A fine home life is an achievement worth planning for as carefully as we plan for any other accomplishment of supreme importance. With reasonable thought and care it is about as easy to learn to live together rightly as to drift into ways of living together wrongly, and it makes all the difference in the world which we do. Let us, then, ask what will help us to keep marriage on a satisfying level. The following points will prove really important.

That attractiveness which first won the attention and approval of the mate should be guarded and enhanced. After marriage it is no less important than before, for we all like to be happy when we look at those who are dearest to us.

While beauty of personality is of supreme importance and outward appearance is in comparison a secondary matter, yet our impression of any person, even one who is closest to us, comes partly through appearance. That part of personal attractiveness, therefore, which depends upon care and good taste deserves serious attention. Let the young man be proud to look well for his wife, and the wife meet her husband with something of the care for her appearance and with the gladness of heart which she showed in courtship days. Love is partly admiration and it is desirable to make a good bid for the continued admiration of one's mate.

Still more important than outward care are expressions of the face, for in it kindness, sincerity, and affection are expressed in many subtle ways. If you have these you will look well to your mate. While the physical appearance is worthy of careful attention the attractiveness of a love-revealing countenance with character behind it is beyond computation. A love-revealing face is a beautiful face. Outward attractiveness is a gift of nature but attractiveness of character is an expression of one's self.

If you continually wear for your mate those expressions which come from a true and loving heart, you will be constantly registering agreeably, whereas if you show irritability and unpleasantness, there is little chance for you to be attractive. Each should also make it possible for the face of the other to show pleasure and confidence. How your comrade looks is partly a matter of your own determining.

A writer in the field of art has said: "Art is beauty, and beauty is 'from within out,' not 'from without in.' Its quality is eternal. Beauty of mind, if it exist, may express itself unconsciously in whatever one does. Some people with very homely and ordinary features are, when thinking and acting rightly, truly beautiful."

Almost or quite as important it the habit of making the best use of our voices, When we speak of the cultivation of the voice we usually think of the singer, the public speaker, the actor, or the radio or screen artist. But all the joy and inspiration which come into life through such persons are slight compared with the incalculable benefits that would follow if people would cultivate persistently the art of using pleasant voices at home. A loving voice used with courtesy and consideration is a beautiful voice, and a mingling of such voices gives a fine quality to any home.