Be Careful What You Say

An account of how to keep your household affairs to yourself. I find it a wonderful reminder of how holding your tongue can benefit your husband and increase his trust in you.

What an immense relief it seems to be to some people when they have worries and troubles just to tell them to some one! I quite envy those folks the ease they get in this way, and yet it is a remedy which I should rarely venture to try on my own account.

My home troubles, for instance, are overwhelming that I don't know how to bear them alone, and, therefore, I long to tell them to my dear friend, Mrs. Kyndley, who is always so sweetly sympathetic. Then I think how tender an interest that good woman has in her neighbour's affairs. How she almost had tears in her eyes the other day when she told me about a poor lady she knew whose husband was a perfect brute to her. I remembered how she ended her story by saying: "The poor wife told me all her troubles, and begged me not to say a word of them to anybody, but, of course, it does not matter my speaking to you of them. You are not even acquainted with her, and if you were, still you are so discreet."

Though no names were mentioned, still I can make a shrewd guess sometimes, and I think I know pretty well who was the unhappy lady about whom Mrs. Kyndley was talking, and I make up my mind that I should be sorry if I were in her place to have made our friend my confidante, and, therefore, I decide that I will keep my affairs to myself.

Dear Mrs. Kyndley really is the very soul of goodness, but it is too much to expect anyone who feels and sympathizes deeply, and who, as it were, makes your trouble her own, to keep it entirely to herself. She, yon, needs to unbosom herself to some how can you be sure that, in telling do not tell your trouble to the world, there are a great many people who, without half of Mrs. Kyndley's sympathy, listen to your tale, and after promising not to speak of it straightway forget that they have made a promise at all. Then the next time they meet a friend, and the conversation happens to turn on you, all that you have shared is pretty sure to be told. It is quite likely that your confidante may ask that what she says may not be repeated, but what is the good of that?

I really think that it is best never to have a human receptacle of secrets at all if one can possibly do without one. For myself (I know it sounds terribly womanish and weak-minded) I confess that when I feel the need of confiding in some one I write down all my woes to a friend a long way off, and before posting my letter I always keep it for forty-eight hours.

It is astonishing how putting them all down on paper relieves me, and when the time for sending the letter comes, and I read it over again, I generally end by putting it into the fire. The edge has worn off the trouble, and now I find it is not more than I can manage to bear alone. As long as I have pen and paper to use, this is the way I shall make my confidences.