The Kist and the Siller.
By Christian Union
THERE is an admirable bit of serio-comedy by Christopher North, in which the taming of the shrew is re-enacted within the precincts of a humble Scottish home. The master of the house, a cobbler, if my memory serves me right, after a long experience of slights and scolding, effectually reduces his termagant companion from unmannerly supremacy to abject submission by the simple expedient of capturing from her the "key of the kist an' the siller." Henceforth the perturbed stream of domestic life flows on without a ripple, though, alas! the suddenly emancipated serf develops into an unreasonable despot. Still there is calm, and the scepter of household authority, typified by the key, is firmly grasped by the head of the house. Observation, comparison of views, thought on the subject, will convince the observer that both the pleasure and the pain of home life are more dependent than many fancy, on the question of money. Neither husband nor wife has a right to control the key of the exchequer. It belongs to both. Community of interests in marriage, equal responsibility, mutual respect, the harmonious adjustment of reciprocal obligations, and the fine sentiment of deference and courtesy which inheres in the best civilization, forbid the debtor and creditor system in home financiering. Notwithstanding the fact, however, that a wise, fair, and clearly understood policy in pecuniary matters is, in the long run, the best economy, many persons go blundering on, year after year, hurting not themselves only, but their children and society, through their singularly short-sighted management of the money question in its bearing upon every-day life. The theory of marriage as laid down in the highest attainable manual of jurisprudence, the Bible, is that the twain, united by a sacred tie, are one flesh. The husband is to love and cherish his wife, as the Lord the church; the wife is to reverence her husband. Can human language do more to make plain the dignity and beauty of the sacred relation? Indulgence, liberality, and generosity are terms wholly inapplicable to the situation when we are speaking of the relations of husband and wife. The one does not dispense an alms; the other does not accept a charity. They are partners in the business of life. For convenience' sake, and because thus from the first hath God ordained it, it is his part to do the providing, and hers to look after the use of the provisions. He attends to the outdoor economy; she to that of the interior, economy being taken in its root-sense of systematic government. She sees, if she be like the beautiful portrait in the Proverbs, that the household is clothed in scarlet and fed on the finest of the wheat. He takes his place among the elders of the land, and goes forth from the shelter and the refuge of a happy, well-appointed home, to the strife of the stock market, or the toil of the anvil, or the desk in the counting-room. "In true marriage lies
Nor equal, nor unequal;" Yet there can be nothing but the farce of equality where the wife must account to the husband for every sixpence, and the husband, forgetful of the consideration due his wife, allows her to be fretted and worried, worn to shreds, and subject to petty mortifications, because five days out of seven she is the possessor of an empty purse. Entire openness and confidence as to the resources of the firm, a definite and exact method of keeping household accounts, and a recognition of the fact that bricks cannot be made without straw, and that a certain approximating annual expense must be proportioned to the position the family occupies in the community, would go far to bring in a millennium in American homes.