The Pittsburgh Press (August 8, 1946)
Ferguson: Quiet, please!
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
You’ll be a good secretary if you keep your mouth shut, says a boss who ought to know. The advice is just as good for wives. Many wreck their lives by too much talking.
The secretary who peddles gossip about her boss and the business of the firm is sure to come a cropper before long. Yet wives often spill important secrets. Certainly the worst feminine trait is that which moves married women to discuss a husband’s faults with her friends.
Of course, it’s fun to let down your hair and talk about the erratic, foolish, inconvenient and mystifying behavior of husbands.
Half the fun would be gone from marriage if women had to stop this kind of chit-chat. They get a great kick out of conversational probings into the male psychology.
But it is one thing to laugh at a husband’s endearing eccentricities, and another to sound off about your own martyrdom at his hands.
In fact, the open mouth and clacking tongue is one reason for the present high divorce rate. For there is nothing so boring as a monologue of a whining woman. Any husband who comes home with frayed nerves and battered sensibilities, and has to listen to a wife’s endless recitals of dull routines is justified in any measures he may finally use to shut her up.
A man can have no greater treasure than a wife who knows when to keep still.