,transcriber's ,note ,italic text displayed as3 italic ,illustration3 ,yours ,sincerely ,dorothy ,dix ,dorothy ,dix--,her ,book ,every-day ,help ,for ,every-day ,people ,illustration3 ,decoration ,,second ,,edition ,,funk ,,wagnalls ,,company ,,new ,,york and ,,london #aibg ,,copyright1 #aibf1 ,,by ,,funk ,,wagnalls ,,company ,printed in the ,united ,states of ,america ,published1 ,august1 #aibf ,copyright ,under the ,articles of the ,copyright ,convention of the ,pan-,american ,republics and the ,united ,states1 ,august #aa1 #aiaj4 ,contents ,,chapter ,,page ,,foreword xi ,,introduction xix ,i ,,how ,a ,,husband ,,likes ,,to ,,be ,,treated #a ,,ii ,,charm #aj ,,iii ,,the ,,ordinary ,,woman #bb ,,iv ,,teach ,,the ,,children ,,to ,,love ,,father #bg ,v ,,strike ,a ,,balance ,,with ,,matrimony #cb ,,vi ,,jealousy #ci ,,vii ,,have ,a ,,goal #dd ,,viii ,,the ,,goat ,,family #dh ,,ix ,,spoiling ,a ,,wife #ec ,x ,,the ,,absence ,,cure ,,for ,,family ,,ills #eh ,,xi ,,the ,,deadly ,,rival #fc ,,xii ,,learn ,a ,,trade1 ,,girls #fg ,,xiii ,,trial ,,divorce #gf ,,xiv ,,marry ,,the ,,man ,,you ,,love #ha ,,xv ,,are ,,you ,,good ,,company ,,for ,,yourself8 #hg ,,xvi ,,keeping ,,young #ib ,,xvii ,,gossip1 ,,the ,,policeman #if ,,xviii ,,the ,,lucky ,,working ,,woman #ajj ,,xix ,,an ,,indoor ,,sport #aje ,,xx ,,should ,,women ,,tell8 #aji ,,xxi ,,domestic ,,boredom #aad ,,xxii ,,to ,,marry ,,or ,,not ,,to ,,marry #aah ,,xxiii ,,woman',s ,,greatest ,,gift #abb ,,xxiv ,,grafting ,,on ,,the ,,old ,,folks #abg ,,xxv ,,are ,,you ,a ,,good ,,father8 #acb ,,xxvi ,,the ,,moral ,,muscles ,,of ,,your ,,children #acf ,,xxvii ,,the ,,mother-,,in-,,law #adj ,,xxviii ,,why ,,our ,,families ,,rile ,,us #ade ,,xxix ,,our ,,lives ,,are ,,what ,,we ,,make ,,them #adi ,,xxx ,,husband ,,losers #aed ,,xxxi ,,martha ,,or ,,mary8 #aei ,,xxxii ,,the ,t4 ,b4 ,m4 ,,at ,,home #afc ,,xxxiii ,,don',t ,,be ,,afraid ,,to ,,let ,,your ,,husband ,,see ,,you ,,love ,,him #afi ,,xxxiv ,,queer ,,things ,,about ,,marriage #agd ,,xxxv ,,husbands--,,the ,,living ,,conundrum #ahj ,,xxxvi ,,the ,,power ,,of ,,suggestion #ahe ,,xxxvii ,,woman',s ,,missionary ,,opportunity #aij ,,xxxviii ,,how ,,to ,,be ,a ,,good ,,husband #aie ,,xxxix ,,giving ,,children ,,advantages #bjj ,,xl ,,sell ,,yourself ,,to ,,your ,,children #bje ,,xli ,,taking ,,husbands 8,,as ,,is0 #baj ,,xlii ,,being ,a ,,good ,,wife #bae ,,xliii ,,invalidism ,a ,,graft #bbb ,,xliv ,,selfishness ,,made ,,to ,,order #bbg ,,xlv ,,self-,,control #bca ,,xlvi ,,old ,,fathers ,,and ,,new ,,daughters #bcf ,,xlvii ,,losing ,a ,,wife',s ,,love #bdj ,,xlviii ,,the ,,lure ,,of ,,the ,,married ,,man #bde ,,xlix ,,forget ,,it #bdi ,l ,,lost ,,love #bed ,,li ,,the ,,show ,,wedding #bei ,,lii ,,when ,,your ,,children ,,are ,,glad ,,you ,,die #bfd ,,liii ,,what ,,price ,,pleasure8 #bfi ,,liv ,,the ,,ideal ,,mother #bgc ,,lv ,,how ,,to ,,catch ,a ,,wife #bgh ,,lvi ,,dangerous ,,girls #bhc ,,lvii ,,when ,a ,,girl ,,loves ,a ,,man #bhh ,,lviii ,,marriage ,,lessons #bic ,,lix ,,the ,,superior ,,business ,,woman #big ,,lx ,,new ,,ideals ,,for ,,old #cja ,,lxi ,,why ,,divorce ,,is ,,common #cje ,,lxii ,,the ,,children ,,pay #caj ,,lxiii ,,the ,,learned ,,profession ,,of ,,home-,,making #cae ,,lxiv ,a ,,father',s ,,influence #cbj ,,lxv ,,the ,,riches ,,of ,,poor ,,children #cbe ,,lxvi ,a ,,man',s ,,right ,,to ,,his ,,home #ccj ,,lxvii ,,devouring ,,friends #ccd ,,lxviii ,,the ,,secret ,,of ,,happiness #cch ,,lxix ,,preparedness ,,for ,,old ,,age #cdc ,foreword ,dorothy ,dix--,her ,book ,a ,,foreword ,,by ,,richard ,,duffy ,to the accurately estimated millions of readers who are familiar with ,dorothy ,dix's understanding and interpretation of the plain facts of everyday life and also its enigmas1 it may appear a presumption that one should attempt a foreword of explanation to make clear why a choice of her daily contributions to the press1 not only in the ,united ,states and ,canada1 but also in farther regions of the world1 should be deemed worthy of the more permanent shelter of book covers4 ,but it becomes at once justifiable when we try to present a true account of the work of 8,the ,little ,lady of ,new ,orleans10 as one of her oldest editors calls her4 ,she herself confesses that1 among the hundreds of letters she receives each day from men and women1 young1 adult and aged1 there recur the questions3 8,are you a real person1 or only a newspaper syndicate name80 8,are you a man1 or are you a woman80 8,are you married or single80 8,have you ever been married80 8,if you have not been married1 would you marry80 8,if you have been married--and are not now--would you marry again80 8,have you any children8 ,if so--are they boys or girls--and how many80 ,it must be emphasized that the questions above recorded are not asked by correspondents merely curious1 who put the questions just to probe the author of the ,dorothy ,dix articles4 ,not at all1 these questions are asked in letters revealing the puzzles of life that entangle the very writers who address ,dorothy ,dix4 ,before they make the simplest inquiry as to the trustworthiness of ,dorothy ,dix1 they tell their own troubles in the way we all have of saying3 8,of course what ,i have said to you is wholly confidential4 ,now let me know where you stand--,i mean about absolute personal fidelity40 ,to a hard-boiled business man1 or business woman1 such a remark seems trite4 ,yet1 we must remember that hard-boiled business persons run to the courts every so often to discover between themselves1 at great expense1 how personal fidelity1 in gush and in fact1 sharply contrast4 ,the self-styled hard-boiled people and the people who pretend they are less sophisticated than they are1 look to ,dorothy ,dix for a way out of all their troubles4 ,these two classes are to be reckoned with1 because they are always telling their troubles to some confidant--the less known1 the better4 ,but the vast majority of the people who write to ,dorothy ,dix for counsel and guidance are profoundly sincere and earnest1 not so much because they fear to be otherwise1 but because they are so firmly persuaded of the sincerity and earnestness of life itself1 when they look it square in the face and without pose of any kind4 ,all and any of these correspondents of ,dorothy ,dix are struggling with their problems of how to make life livable4 ,in the case of the young woman who has a good job and1 at the same time1 has a good home with her parents1 the question arises whether she should marry the man she likes1 and who on his part likes her1 and then undertake to become a parent herself without a salaried job and without the safeguard of the home provided by her father and mother4 ,on the other side there appears the problem of the young man1 who would marry1 but for responsibilities1 psychological as well as financial1 that make him stop1 look and listen before he leaves a dependent father and mother unsupported4 ,we pass to the men and women who are actually married and suddenly discover that they are facing the real and inevitable conflict of life at home as compared with the daily battle of the business world4 ,some husbands are go-getters1 but they do not get anywhere because their wives are shiftless as home managers1 or because they are spendthrifts1 and would always1 without trying1 spend twice as much money as any husband has1 or can earn4 ,some wives are the best of helpmates1 but are linked to husbands who simply cannot or will not achieve the quiet fame of a weekly pay-envelope which is the rock foundation of 8,home ,sweet ,home40 ,some wives are afflicted with the disease of 8social climbing40 ,they spend their days and nights proving to their husbands that for every dollar earned1 it is better to spend two dollars1 in order to take a chance at three1 by inviting the ,smiths to the theatre and to supper afterward4 ,such wives usually overlook the fact that the ,smiths1 with whom they would curry favor at great expense1 are themselves spending two dollars for every one dollar gained on the principle that it is a good investment to obtain equal social standing with the ,joneses4 ,also to be encountered in this book are the varied specimens of husbands and wives who have become tired of each other and seek from ,dorothy ,dix guidance towards a way out of what they consider the morass of marriage4 ,then1 too1 we meet the father1 or the mother1 who is perplexed about the way children grow up nowadays--as tho the way children grew up has not always been a surprise to parents since the days of ,romulus and ,remus4 ,to sum up1 all dramatis person in the stupendous play of life1 being enacted day in and day out1 as we live1 are brought on the world's stage before us1 not so much by ,dorothy ,dix as by themselves in the confidences they repose in her and the disclosures they make about themselves4 ,despite this fact there never has been nor will there be anything merely approaching a betrayal of confidence by ,dorothy ,dix4 ,she talks to the whole world of men and women1 and their worries and concerns are so alike that all shadow of individual identity is lost4 ,she talks to them1 not from the pedestal of the highbrow1 but from the average level of a human being1 who herself has fought the grim battle of life--as may be learned from her personal statement1 which immediately follows these pages4 ,one of the most distinguished of living ,american novelists1 on being shown a few letters in her day's mail1 asked3 8,how many such letters do you receive a month80 ,she replied3 8,it takes me from three to four hours each day to answer my correspondents--and then ,i have to write my articles besides40 8,great ,scott60 exclaimed the novelist4 8,you have more plots in a day's letters than any hard-working novelist could invent in a year40 ,but none of these potential plots is available even for the most prolific of story-writers1 because they are not 8plots0 to ,dorothy ,dix1 but sacred testimonies to the help the 8,little ,lady of ,new ,orleans0 has been able to render through many years to her ever-increasing number of friends and confidants4 ,introduction ,introduction ,,my ,,philosophy ,,of ,,life ,i have had what people call a hard life4 ,i have been through the depths of poverty and sickness4 ,i have known want and struggle and anxiety and despair4 ,i have always had to work beyond the limit of my strength4 ,as ,i look back upon my life1 ,i see it as a battlefield strewn with the wrecks of dead dreams and broken hopes and shattered illusions--a battle in which ,i always fought with the odds tremendously against me1 and which has left me scarred and bruised and maimed and old before my time4 ,yet ,i have no pity for myself2 no tears to shed over the past and gone sorrows2 no envy for the women who have been spared all that ,i have gone through4 ,for ,i have lived4 ,they have only existed4 ,i have drunk the cup of life down to the very dregs4 ,they have only sipped at the bubbles on the top of it4 ,i know things they will never know4 ,i see things to which they are blind4 ,it is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world4 ,this of itself is a compensation for many sorrows1 but ,i have more4 ,i have proved myself to myself4 ,i know that ,i have the strength to endure and the courage to carry on1 and that ,i will not be craven enough to run up the white flag1 no matter what other difficulties ,i may be called upon to meet4 ,the skeleton at the feast of the woman who has always been happy and prosperous is fear4 ,she becomes panic-stricken when she thinks that she may be called upon to meet trouble2 that she may have hardships to endure2 that her soul may be torn with suffering4 ,she suffers with apprehension at the thought of poverty1 and wonders how she could endure to go shabby and do without the things to which she is accustomed4 ,she wonders helplessly what she would do if she had to earn her own living4 ,i am not afraid of poverty because ,i have been poor and ,i know that poverty has its consolations and brings you pleasures that money cannot buy4 ,nor am ,i afraid to support myself4 ,i have earned my bread and butter for many years4 ,i know the joy of work and ,i know that to a woman1 just the satisfaction of knowing that she is self-supporting turns her crust into angel's food4 ,none of the fears with which happy women torture themselves upon occasion have any terrors for me4 ,i know them for the bogies they are1 and know1 too1 that they fly away before the person who does not cringe before them4 ,often ,i am tempted to envy the woman who has always had some strong man to stand between her and the world1 some man whose tenderness and love has guarded and protected her4 ,but ,i am consoled for not being a clinging vine when ,i wonder what the vine would do and think how broken it would be if the sturdy oak on which it hangs were laid low4 ,i have learned in the great ,university of ,hard ,knocks a philosophy that no woman who has had an easy life ever acquires4 ,i have learned to live each day as it comes1 and not to borrow trouble by dreading to-morrow4 ,it is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us4 ,i put that dread from me because experience has taught me that when the time comes that ,i so fear1 the strength and wisdom to meet it will be given me4 ,little annoyances have no longer the power to affect me4 ,after you have seen your whole edifice of happiness topple and crash in ruins about you1 it never matters to you again that a servant forgets to put the doilies under the finger bowls or the cook spills the soup4 ,i have learned not to expect too much of people and so ,i can still get happiness out of the friend who isn't quite true to me1 or the acquaintance who gossips about me1 and ,i can even find pleasure in the society of those whose motives ,i see through4 ,above all ,i have acquired a sense of humor1 because there were so many things over which ,i had either to laugh or cry4 ,and when a woman can joke over her troubles instead of having hysterics1 nothing can ever hurt her much again4 ,so ,i do not regret the hardships ,i have known because through them ,i have touched life at every point4 ,i have lived4 ,and it was worth the price ,i had to pay4 ,,dorothy ,,dix4 ,dorothy ,dix--,her ,book ,dorothy ,dix--,her ,book ,i ,,how ,a ,,husband ,,likes ,,to ,,be ,,treated ,altho marriage has been the chief business of woman since ,eve pulled off the first wedding in the ,garden of ,eden1 women have not yet mastered the first indispensable principle of success in their profession4 ,millions of women have been married4 ,hundreds of thousands of women marry annually1 and yet1 as a class1 women do not know how to treat a husband4 ,here and there is a shining exception to this rule1 and the result is an inspiring picture of domestic bliss4 ,but the great majority of women still go stumbling along into misery and divorce because they have not had the wit to find out how to rub man's fur the right way1 and make him purr under their hands4 ,in a word1 women fail to strike just the right note in their attitude towards their husbands4 ,sometimes they treat them better than they deserve4 ,sometimes worse1 but seldom do they treat the men just as the men would like to be treated4 ,perhaps the real reason that women fail in this most important particular is because they make the mistake of treating a husband as if he were a rational human being1 and the same sort of an individual inside of the home circle that he is outside of it4 ,never was there a greater error4 ,the ,john ,smith to whom a woman is married is no more the ,john ,smith of the business world than he is some other man4 ,the ,john ,smith1 who is a lawyer1 or a doctor1 or a grocer in the outer world1 is a big1 strong1 broad1 self-reliant man who looks at everything in a large way1 and is just1 and tolerant1 and even stoical in meeting the vicissitudes of life4 ,the woman who marries him has perceived all of these qualities1 and loved him for them1 and she naturally expects him to exhibit these characteristics in home life4 ,fatal blunder4 ,john ,smith1 the business man1 may be dealt with on a plain1 sensible1 aboveboard platform1 but ,john ,smith the husband1 has to be jollied1 and cajoled1 and petted1 and wheedled along the road he should go1 if there is anything doing in the domestic felicity line in the household of which he is the alleged head4 ,now the majority of husbands average up quite as well as the majority of wives1 but even when a man is really good1 and true1 and strong1 experience teaches his wife that there are three ways in which he likes her to treat him4 ,they are3 7a7 ,like a baby4 7b7 ,like a demigod4 7c7 ,like a good fellow4 ,no matter how big and strong a man is1 nor how many other men he bosses1 he wants his wife to treat him as if he were a delicate infant who had to be petted1 and nursed1 and dandled1 and chucked under the chin4 ,there isn't a man living whose secret ideal of a perfect wife isn't a woman who puts the buttons in his shirt1 and lays out his collar and tie in the morning1 who has his slippers toasting on the radiator when he comes home of an evening1 and who cooks just the particular thing he likes to eat1 with her own hands4 ,talk about your women who can hand out intellectual companionship6 ,produce your living pictures6 ,exhibit your paragons of virtue6 ,they are simply not one1 two1 three with the wise dame who pets and fusses over her lord and master4 ,and it isn't because the man really wants his wife to wait on him4 ,that doesn't enter into it at all4 ,he's just like the three-year-old who howls for mama to put on his shoes or butter his bread when there are seven nurses standing around to do it4 ,men are babyish in wanting their wives to show them off4 ,the expression on the face of little ,tommy while his fond mother is telling the smart things that he said1 is exactly the same expression that is on ,tommy's father's face while his wife is bragging about how he organized a trust1 or won a big lawsuit1 or was elected judge4 ,wise1--oh1 a daughter of ,solomon is the woman who puts her husband through his paces for the benefit of company4 ,matrimony is one long1 glad sweet song in the household of the lady who acts as a showman for hubby4 ,consider also a man when he is sick1 or thinks he is sick4 ,how does he want to be treated then8 ,like a baby4 ,he wants his wife to sit by his bed1 and hold his hand1 and weep tears of sympathy1 and if she doesn't believe he is going to die every time he has a headache1 he considers her a cold1 heartless icicle and doubts her affection4 ,therefore1 the very first principle in treating a husband is to treat him as if he was your littlest baby1 and if you do1 he will gurgle1 and coo just as your two-year-old does when you smother him with kisses1 and asks3 8#8,oose de most booflest boy on earf1 an' mudders itty1 pitty wonder1 and world beater80 ,secondly1 every husband likes to be treated as if he were a demigod4 ,men won't admit it1 but in his soul every husband feels that he has conferred such an inestimable boon upon his wife by marrying her that she can never really repay him1 anyway1 but that it is up to her to keep busy on the job4 ,therefore1 the least she can do is to act grateful4 ,the real reason why there is a continual conflict in most families over the money question is not because husbands are stingy1 but because a man likes to dole the money out1 piece by piece1 so that the woman who gets it may have a living exhibition of his generosity4 ,when a man complains about how extravagant his wife is1 and how much her hat and dress cost1 it doesn't mean that he begrudges her a single garment or the price thereof4 ,on the contrary1 it is his way of boasting to the world of how prosperous he is1 and how well he provides for his family4 ,stupid1 indeed1 is the woman who does not comprehend this1 and who does not keep her glad rags hanging in public1 so to speak1 and continually beat upon the cymbal1 and chant pans of praise about how good her husband is to provide her with her lovely clothes4 ,nor is this as silly as it sounds4 ,the average man gets practically nothing out of his labor1 after he has supported his family1 but his board and clothes1 and it is pretty discouraging to spend your life toiling for those who take all that you can give1 and make no sign of appreciation in return4 ,so it is not strange that husbands like their wives to treat them as a beneficent providence from whom all blessings flow4 ,husbands like to be treated as good fellows4 ,if the average married man could put up one prayer more fervent than all the rest it would be this3 8,lord1 send me a wife who laughs1 and a home that isn't an understudy to a funeral parlor60 ,but his prayer isn't often answered4 ,now one of the great reasons why so many husbands and wives make shipwreck of their lives together is because a man is always seeking for happiness1 while a woman is on a perpetual still hunt for trouble4 ,when anything uncomfortable happens to a man he tries to forget it1 to put it behind him1 to get it out of his thoughts1 even if he has to drown it in drink4 ,when a misfortune befalls a woman she gloats over it4 ,she keeps pressing her finger on every sore until she makes a raging abscess of it4 ,then she goes on a jag of tears4 ,the result of this feminine peculiarity is that the average home is not a cheerful place1 nor is the average wife a joyous companion1 and that is why a very large number of husbands seek their amusements elsewhere1 and with other people4 ,the greatest danger that menaces domesticity is that so many wives are killjoys4 ,the question is often asked--why do men1 who are penurious and niggardly to their families1 and who never pay a household bill without grumbling1 spend money so lavishly on their vices8 ,the answer is easy4 ,a man's home is dull1 and the money that his family costs him gives him no fillip of pleasure4 ,the other does4 ,the home has been made to mean to him nothing but hard duty1 ungilded by any joy4 ,the opening of champagne for chorus girls is to the tune of gaiety and laughter4 ,therefore1 he is willing to pay for one and begrudges paying for the other4 ,once ,i was listening to a group of intelligent people discuss the most desirable quality in a wife4 ,they named the usual standard virtues until suddenly one man burst out in a voice surcharged with genuine emotion4 8,i tell you10 he said1 8what a man wants in a wife more than anything else is a cheerful companion4 ,goodness8 ,bah6 ,all women1 at least the kind a man marries1 are good4 ,economy8 ,a man likes to spend money on his wife4 ,amiability8 ,who wants a simpering doll always about8 ,domesticity8 ,stuff and nonsense4 ,a man's stomach isn't the most important part of him4 ,besides there is a good restaurant on every corner1 if he is bound to gorge himself on food4 8,i tell you what a man wants is cheerfulness in his wife4 ,he wants to come home at night to somebody who will meet him with a smile1 somebody who has got a lot of bright little things to tell him1 and who can make him laugh1 somebody who is willing to put on her prettiest dress and go out with him if he wants to go to any place of amusement4 8,he doesn't want to come home to a woman who is sodden with tears1 or who is running over with the accumulated worries of the day that she dumps on him1 who is full of her own and other people's hard luck stories1 and who looks like a chapter of the ,lamentations of ,jeremiah40 ,of course1 whether a wife is melancholy or not does not1 from an ethical standpoint1 alter her husband's duty to her4 ,he should be strong enough to love and cherish her no matter how lacrimose she is2 but the martyr's crown is a piece of headgear that is distinctly unfashionable at the present time1 and most men duck wearing it4 ,wherefore1 it behooves the ,amalgamated ,order of ,doleful ,wives to cheer up1 and try to be more lively companions to their husbands if they don't want those gentlemen to stray off in search of ladies with sunnier dispositions4 ,as a matter of fact1 men are1 emotionally1 very primitive creatures with a few simple domestic wants4 ,they desire to be petted1 and jollied1 and looked up to by their wives1 and then they want to be treated as good fellows4 ,they want their wives to be chums with them1 and not reforming institutions1 or lecture bureaus4 ,the average man simply pines for cheerful comradeship from his wife4 ,he wants her to enjoy the things that he does1 to like the people he likes1 to amuse herself with the things that divert him4 ,he wants to hear her laugh1 to see her eyes sparkle1 and for her to treat him as on a par with herself1 as if they were joyous fellow sinners together1 instead of her being a living reproof to him as a poor low-browed creature1 with musical-comedy tastes that make her shudder4 ,yet do you ever notice the ordinary married couple out together8 ,it is one of the most piteous sights on earth4 ,the man is spending his money trying to give his wife a good time1 and she meets his noble efforts with the rasping qualities of a crosscut saw4 ,that is what gives eternal pungency to the old ,weber and ,fields joke about the man who1 when asked if he was going to take his wife with him on a trip to ,paris1 replied3 8,no1 ,i am going on a pleasure excursion40 ,of course whether it is any more a woman's place to get along with her husband than it is his to get along with her is another fight1 which ,i am not trying to referee here4 ,so also is the question of how a wife likes to be treated4 ,what ,i have tried to show is how a husband would like his wife to pull the wool over his eyes and put on the velvet glove before she tries to manage him--because men really enjoy being bamboozled by women who turn out a nice artistic job4 ,what they object to is not being henpecked1 but the raw way in which their wives do it4 ,,ii ,,charm ,over and over again girls ask me these questions3 ,what is charm8 ,what is the secret of the attraction that some women have for men8 ,what is the 8come-hither0 look in the eye that some women have that makes every man who beholds it get up and follow them8 ,why do some girls always have hosts of beaux flocking about them1 while other girls just as good-looking1 just as clever1 just as good dancers1 just as anxious to please1 never have a date or a single sweetheart to bless themselves with8 ,and to all of these questions ,i have to answer1 sadly and disconsolately1 that ,i do not know4 ,i have to give up the conundrum1 which is perhaps the riddle that the ,sphinx1 who is partly a woman1 has brooded over through the centuries in her desert solitude1 without ever being able to solve it4 ,in ,barrie's delightful play1 8,what ,every ,woman ,knows10 ,maggie's brothers1 discussing her with the brutal frankness with which brothers approach the subject of a sister1 agreed that she wasn't young1 nor brilliant1 and that she was homely1 yet all the men were after her4 ,finally one of the brothers said3 8,but she's got that damned charm40 ,and that was that4 ,when a woman has that damned charm she can snap her fingers in the face of flappers and living pictures1 and marry as early and as often as she pleases as is witnessed by the many fat1 pie-faced women we all know who have had two1 and three1 or more1 husbands apiece1 and who still have a waiting list in case anything untoward and fatal should happen to the gentlemen to whom they are at present united in the holy bonds of matrimony4 ,but what is this charm1 what is this rabbit's foot that some lucky women carry1 and others do not8 ,to say that it is personality is to attempt to explain one mystery by another mystery1 for we do not know in what personal magnetism consists1 or by what power one individual draws us1 while another repulses us4 ,we know that it isn't beauty1 because the best lookers among girls are seldom the most popular1 and men who profess to worship beauty are generally content to adore it from a safe distance1 and show no disposition to marry it4 ,it is notorious that beauties seldom make good matches4 ,nor does charm consist of intelligence4 ,being a highbrow booms no woman's stock1 socially or matrimonially1 while a witty woman cuts her throat with her own tongue4 ,to be a spellbinder is for a girl's fairy godmother to have wished a curse instead of a blessing upon her1 for no woman is more anathema to men than the human phonograph4 ,even dancing1 chief of accomplishments in these jazzy days when it is of more profit for a woman to have her brains in her heels than in her head1 is but a passing attraction1 while amiability and a sweet nature1 woman's traditional one best bet1 are like a sticking plaster1 potent to hold a man after marriage1 but of small value in luring him into it4 ,undoubtedly1 charm in its perfection is a gift of the gods1 but happily1 in these days1 when nature proves a cruel stepmother who is so mean and stingy that she does not give us all that is coming to us1 we have learned to circumvent the lady4 ,no woman need be as ugly as ,god made her1 nor as unattractive as she was born4 ,drug-store complexions can put the inherited ones to the blush1 and any girl who is willing to take the trouble can acquire a line of lures and graces that will make any bona fide siren tremble for her job4 ,to the girl1 then1 who wishes to acquire charm1 and who especially wishes to attract men1 ,i would say1 first1 stress your femininity4 ,i don't mean be namby-pamby and weepy and dish-raggy1 without any backbone4 ,that type of woman has gone out of fashion as completely as bustles and hoopskirts4 ,no man now would be bored with the sort of perfect lady his grandmother was4 ,but the eternal feminine remains still the eternal attraction for men1 and the more womanly a woman is1 the gentler1 the tenderer1 the sweeter1 the more she appeals to men4 ,if you will notice when a man speaks of the woman he loves1 he invariably calls her 8little0 no matter if she is six feet high and weighs #bjj pounds4 ,what he means is that she gives him the reaction of depending upon him1 of looking up to him1 and that in some subtle way she flatters his vanity by giving him the sense of masculine superiority4 ,you never see an aggressive1 double-fisted woman1 who fights her way as a man does1 get anywhere4 ,and in his soul every man adores frills and furbelows1 and likes to see women dolled up4 ,that is why girls make such a terrible mistake when they ape mannish ways1 and wear mannish clothes4 ,when a girl puts on knickerbockers she throws her trump card into the discard4 ,to the girl who wishes to acquire charm ,i would also whisper this secret3 ,make of yourself a mirror in which other people look upon themselves4 ,especially let men see a flattering reflection of themselves in your eyes4 ,can your own personal vanity4 ,listen with bated breath while other people tell you of their exploits1 but never mention your own4 ,enthuse over their cars1 their dogs4 ,marvel at their adventures4 ,sympathize with their disappointments4 ,give the glad hand to their successes1 and you will be universally regarded as a woman of perfect taste1 wonderful insight1 profound judgment1 a brilliant talker and a companion of whom one could never weary4 ,it is the tireless listeners1 and not the endless talkers1 whom men take out to dinner4 ,to the girl who wishes to develop charm ,i would likewise earnestly recommend an intensive course of self-analysis4 ,i would say to her3 8,study yourself4 ,find out what you can wear and what you cannot wear4 ,find out the things that you can do and get away with1 and the things that you cannot do without making yourself appear either a dumbbell or a figure of fun4 ,then1 having ascertained what are your best points1 turn the spotlight on them4 ,emphasize them until you make everybody sit up and take notice1 so that even casual acquaintances will remember you as the girl who always wears pink1 or the girl who always dresses in black1 or the girl with the ,mona ,lisa smile1 or the girl who is so jolly and such a cut-up1 or the girl who listens to you with such an absorbed expression on her face that you could go on talking to her forever4 ,i would urge girls to try to be themselves1 plus1 as they say in business1 and to raise whatever charms of body1 or mind1 or heart1 they have to its nth power4 ,that is the best way to acquire personality1 the 8something different0 about us that sets us apart from every other human being1 instead of our being just one of the herd4 ,don't be a copycat4 ,don't understudy the mannerisms of another girl just because she happens to be popular4 ,imitation airs and graces have about as much sparkle to them as imitation diamonds4 ,besides1 you never can make a go of it4 ,you can't put on another woman's characteristics any more than you can her clothes1 and make them seem as if they were your own birthday suit4 ,they are always a grotesque misfit4 ,charm has to be made to order and cut to the measurement of the individual4 ,that is why one girl may do bold1 outrageous things and everybody only shrugs his shoulders and laughs at her1 while another girl is sent to ,coventry for not doing half so much4 ,that is why some women always have a masculine shoulder offered for them to weep upon1 while men tell other women not to be fools whenever they shed a tear4 ,so the trick is for the girl to find out what her own class is and qualify for the blue ribbon in that instead of trying to force her way into a bunch of prize winners where she doesn't belong and where she will be thrown out by the judges4 ,yet many girls make the mistake of doing this very thing4 ,a quiet1 serious-minded1 mouse-like little girl observes that some gay and dashing girl1 who has quicksilver in her veins and over whose lips laughter bubbles as spontaneously as a mountain spring1 is much admired and sought after and is the life of the party wherever she goes4 8,aha6 ,vivacity is what makes a girl popular10 says the demure one to herself4 8,i will also be sprightly1 and merry1 and make a hit40 ,so she tries to imitate the high spirits of the gay girl1 but she can't do it4 ,her home-made vivacity is as flat as home-brew beer beside imported champagne4 ,instead of being bright1 she is loud4 ,instead of laughing1 she giggles4 ,instead of being sprightly1 she jumps around like a monkey on a stick4 ,she is so afraid she won't talk enough that she chatters incessantly1 and instead of amusing people she bores them to death4 ,yet the very girl who is such a failure as a live wire could have charmed every one if only she had given a master performance of girlish sweetness1 and gentleness1 and quietness4 ,she could have been a great success if she had remained the shrinking violet that nature made her1 but she was a rank failure as a gaudy sunflower4 ,then there is the big1 ,amazonian woman who tries to be cute and cunning1 because she sees some baby doll getting the glad hand when she curls up on sofas1 and sits on one foot1 and perches on the edges of tables1 and who only succeeds in looking like a performing elephant instead of a playful kitten when she performs these stunts4 ,and there is the woman without an inch of funny bone in her whole anatomy who tries to tell good stories because she sees some jolly woman raconteur set the table in a roar at dinner parties1 and who wonders why people burst into tears instead of into peals of mirth when she recites her carefully memorized jokes4 ,they couldn't fill other women's rles1 yet the big woman could have made us worship her as a goddess if she had stayed on her pedestal instead of coming down and trying to do double somersaults in the ring4 ,we would have listened eagerly enough to intelligent talk from a serious thinker who didn't try to be funny1 for ,heaven knows we get tired enough of amateur jokesmiths who think we want to be perpetually tickled in the ribs4 ,believe me1 girls1 there is much wisdom in the old proverb that advises the shoemaker to stick to his last4 ,we are most admirable when we are what nature made us with the aid of a few little arts and embellishments to throw the original model up into higher relief4 ,so ,i counsel you to make the most of yourselves4 ,abandon the foolish attempt of trying to make yourselves over into a poor copy of some woman who is admired4 ,charm isn't standardized4 ,it has a million forms1 and every woman should illustrate her own particular version of it4 ,after all what we call charm is largely a matter of personality and the girl who wishes to cultivate that elusive something that we call personality does well to pay much attention to her dress4 ,this sounds like superfluous advice to the sex whose brains are mostly cut on the bias and shirred in the middle1 and which is more concerned over the hang of a skirt than it is over the state of its immortal soul4 ,it is not too much to say that three-fourths of women's thoughts and interest in life and heart-felt desires and envies are concentrated upon clothes1 and the marvel always is that they can put so much effort on a subject and get such poor results4 ,for the great majority of women only think of dress in terms of fashion1 and they follow the mode of the moment as sheep follow their leader over a wall4 ,they wear blue or purple1 pink or green1 short skirts or long skirts1 tight ones or full ones1 without any reference to their complexions or whether their ankles are sylphlike or like the legs of a piano1 or whether they are living skeletons1 or have featherbed figures4 ,the result is that thousands upon thousands of women look as if their worst enemy had bought their clothes1 and their hats are a premeditated insult to their faces4 ,but they go their way1 serene and happy1 having done the worst they could by themselves1 but blissful in the knowledge that they are wearing what everybody else is wearing4 ,apparently it never enters the average woman's head that by clothing herself in the feminine uniform of the hour she makes herself indistinguishable in the mob1 or that she could call attention to herself by breaking away from it1 and dressing to suit her own particular type4 ,still less does it occur to her that her clothes offer her an invaluable mode of self-expression1 and that by them she can emphasize her good points and camouflage her defects4 ,yet every moving picture1 every play she sees1 offers a girl an object lesson in the psychology of clothes that she does not heed4 ,she never asks herself why the innocent1 trusting maiden1 too artless for her own good1 always wears a white muslin and a blue sash2 why the ingenue is always a mass of fluffy ruffles2 why the betrayed heroine always wears a slinky black dress2 why the adventuress is clothed in crimson and spangles2 why the vamp invariably wears long jade earrings1 and a quart of beads1 and very little else4 ,yet astute stage managers have found that the surest way to make an audience visualize a woman in a certain way is to have her dress the part4 ,a girl might1 of course1 be as innocent in a crimson dress as a white one2 a woman might be as heartbroken in a pink silk and lace negligee as she is in a bedraggled black alpaca1 but it would take a long argument to convince us of it1 and we wouldn't weep nearly as freely over her woes as we do when we get an eyeful of her in the clothes that tell us at once just what a poor1 innocent1 persecuted heroine she is4 ,surely this should suggest to every girl the wisdom of retiring to her closet1 and having a heart-to-heart session with her wardrobe1 and a vivisection party with her character1 and thereby try to find out how to dress her soul as well as her body1 so as best and most effectively to press-agent her individuality1 so to speak4 ,if she is of the bold and dashing type1 let her flaunt herself like a sunflower in daring costumes and flaming colors1 but if she is of the quiet and gentle sort1 soft fabrics1 chiffons and laces and pastel shades belong to her1 and make her look like the traditional modest violet that every man dreams of securing as a wife4 ,let the girl who is flat-chested and athletic rejoice in her sport clothes4 ,that is her note1 and brings out a certain piquant boyishness which is her greatest attraction4 ,but let the girl who is plump1 with gracious curves1 make the most of her femininity by decking herself out in the frilliest frocks that she can find4 ,each will lose in charm if she swaps her plumage for the other's4 ,dangling ornaments1 floating ribbons and jingling bracelets belong to the gay and foolish and frivolous1 but they detract from the dignity of the stately1 thoughtful1 serious-minded woman4 ,a tailor-made suit is equal to a certificate of virtue1 and when a girl is applying for a job a plain1 dark-colored suit will do more to land her the position than a gilt-edged reference4 ,nobody ever believes that a girl in a low-necked1 no-sleeved frock can ever be a competent business woman4 ,she doesn't look it4 ,every woman knows that her eyes seem twice as blue if she has a blue lining to her hat1 and that she can turn a spotlight on her every freckle by wearing a spotted dress4 ,in the same way she can bring out her characteristics by the way she dresses4 ,if she wishes to emphasize her cuteness1 she can do it by dressing like a baby doll4 ,if she wishes to be thought a goddess1 she can add to her divinity by long-trailing robes4 ,if she wishes to be thought a good sport and treated as a pal by men1 sport clothes are hers1 while if domesticity is her long suit1 she can turn the trick by wearing ruffled little white aprons at home4 ,so study your type1 girls1 and dress the part1 if you want to make the most of the attractions with which nature has endowed you4 ,,iii ,,the ,,ordinary ,,woman ,i wish that ,i had the distributing of some of the ,carnegie medals for heroes4 ,i would give one to just the ,ordinary ,woman4 ,it is true that she never manned a lifeboat in a stormy sea1 or plunged into a river to save a drowning person4 ,it is true that she never stopped a runaway horse1 or dashed into a burning building1 or gave any other spectacular exhibition of courage4 ,she has only stood at her post thirty1 or forty1 or fifty years1 fighting sickness and poverty and loneliness1 and disappointment so quietly1 with such a ,spartan fortitude that the world has never noticed her achievements4 ,yet1 in the presence of the ,ordinary ,woman1 the battle-scarred veteran1 with his breast covered with medals signifying valor1 may well stand uncovered before one braver than he4 ,there is nothing high and heroic in her appearance4 ,she is just a commonplace woman1 plainly dressed1 with a tired face and work-worn hands--the kind of woman that you meet a hundred times a day upon the street without ever giving her a second glance1 still less saluting her as a heroine4 ,nevertheless1 as much as the bravest soldier1 she is entitled to the cross of the ,legion of ,honor for distinguished gallantry on the ,battlefield of ,life4 ,years and years ago1 when she was fresh and young1 and gay1 and light-hearted1 she was married4 ,her head1 as is the case with most girls1 was full of dreams4 ,her husband was to be a ,prince ,charming1 always tender and considerate and loving1 shielding her from every care and worry4 ,life itself was to be a fairy tale4 ,one by one the dreams fell away4 ,the husband was a good man1 but he grew indifferent to her before long4 ,he ceased to notice when she put on a fresh ribbon4 ,he never paid her the little compliments for which a woman's soul hungers4 ,he never gave her a kiss or a caress1 and their married life sank into a deadly monotony that had no romance to brighten it1 no joy or love to lighten it4 ,day after day she sewed and cooked and cleaned and mended to make a comfortable home for a man who did not even give her the poor pay of a few words of appreciation4 ,at his worst he was cross and querulous4 ,at his best he was silent1 and would gobble his food like a hungry animal and subside into his paper1 leaving her to spend a dull and monotonous evening after a dull and monotonous day4 ,the husband was not one of the fortunate few who have the gift of making money4 ,he worked hard1 but opportunity does not smile on every man1 and the wolf was never very far away from their door4 ,women know the worst of poverty4 ,it is the wife1 who has the spending of the insufficient family income1 who learns all the bitter ways of scrimping and paring and saving4 ,the husband must present a decent appearance1 for policy's sake1 when he goes to business2 certain things are necessities for the children2 and so the heaviest of all the deprivations fall upon the woman who stays at home and strives to make one dollar do the work of five4 ,that is the way of the ,ordinary ,woman2 and what sacrifices she makes1 what tastes she crucifies1 what longings for pretty things and dainty things she smothers1 not even her own family guess4 ,they think it is an eccentricity that makes her choose the neck of the chicken and the hard end of the loaf and to stay at home from any little outing4 ,ah1 if they only knew6 ,for each of her children she trod the ,gethsemane of woman1 only to go through that slavery of motherhood which the woman endures who is too poor to hire competent nurses4 ,for years and years she never knew what it was to have a single night's unbroken sleep4 ,the small hours of the morning found her walking the colic1 or nursing the croup1 or covering restless little sleepers1 or putting water to thirsty little lips4 ,there was no rest for her1 day or night4 ,there was always a child in her arms or clinging to her skirts4 ,oftener than not she was sick and nerve-worn and weary almost to death1 but she never failed to rally to the call of 8,mother60 as a good soldier rallies to his battle-cry4 ,nobody called her brave1 and yet1 when one of the children came down with malignant diphtheria1 she braved death a hundred times1 in bending over the little sufferer1 without one thought of danger4 ,and when the little one was laid away under the sod1 she who had loved most was the first to gather herself together and take up the burden of life for the others4 ,the supreme moment of the ,ordinary ,woman's life1 however1 came when she educated her children above herself and lifted them out of her sphere4 ,she did this with deliberation4 ,she knew that in sending her bright boy and talented girl off to college she was opening up to them paths in which she could not follow2 she knew that the time would come when they would look upon her with pitying tolerance or contempt1 or perhaps--,god help her6--be ashamed of her4 ,but she did not falter in her self-sacrifice4 ,she worked a little harder1 she denied herself a little more1 to give them the advantages that she never had4 ,in this she was only like millions of other ,ordinary ,women who are toiling over cooking-stoves1 slaving at sewing-machines1 pinching and economizing to educate and cultivate their children--digging with their own hands the chasm that will separate them almost as much as death itself would4 ,wherefore ,i say the ,ordinary ,woman is the real heroine of life4 ,,iv ,,teach ,,the ,,children ,,to ,,love ,,father ,are you teaching your children to love and admire their father8 ,do you ceaselessly point out to your children their father's good qualities8 ,do you hold their father up as a hero before your children's eyes8 ,do you teach your children to appreciate their father8 ,if you do not1 you are not giving your husband a fair deal1 nor a run for his money4 ,fatherhood calls for just as many sacrifices as motherhood does4 ,the only coin in which these can be repaid is affection and gratitude1 and if he is defrauded of these he is poor indeed4 ,from the time the first baby is born the average man becomes literally the slave of his family4 ,he sells himself into bondage so that his children may live soft2 that they may have advantages that he never had in his youth2 that they may enjoy luxuries he never knew4 ,he works overtime and grows prematurely old and bent1 that his boys may go to college and belong to smart clubs and have automobiles1 and that his daughters may attend fashionable schools1 and dress like fashion plates1 and go in the right circles4 ,it is father who stays at home and works through hot summers and cold winters1 when the family goes to ,europe4 ,it is father who wears the shabbiest clothes4 ,it is father who has the worst room and the smallest closet space in the home4 ,the percentage of money that father spends on himself and in gratifying his own personal tastes and desires is negligible4 ,virtually all the money he has earned by a lifetime of hard toil has been lavished on his family4 ,whether this pays or not1 whether all of this labor and anxiety and self-denial have been worthless or not1 depends altogether on his children's attitude toward him4 ,if they love him2 if they are grateful to him2 if they appreciate what he has done for them1 it is the best investment that a man ever made1 and it makes him richer than any millionaire4 ,but if his children are indifferent and callous2 if they take all that he has done for them as no more than their due1 and without even a 8thank you02 if they see in him nothing but a shabby little man who hasn't been particularly successful as a moneymaker1 then all his life work goes for nothing4 ,his sacrifices are without reward4 ,he is bankrupt in heart4 ,now1 the attitude of children toward their father is almost entirely determined by their mother2 and whether they look upon him as a superior being to be adored and worshiped1 or merely as a cash register that they can punch whenever they want any money1 depends altogether upon what she has taught them4 ,there are women who teach their children to hate and fear their father by making him an ogre to them4 ,when the children are bad the little culprits are always threatened with what their father will do to them4 ,the mother thus makes the father the hanging judge who inflicts punishment on the small sinners4 ,in this way the mother fills the child's imagination with a picture of its father as of some dread creature who is always lying in wait to chastise him1 and who could never have any sympathy or understanding with him1 and with whom he could never have any possible companionship4 8,i'll tell your father on you when he comes home10 is the curse that millions of women lay between their children and their husbands1 and that seals the children's hearts forever against the fathers who have given them their very life blood4 ,there are other women who teach their children to regard their fathers simply as money-making machines that exist solely for their own use and benefit4 ,what the children want they must have at any cost to father1 and mother undertakes to nag it out of him4 ,the children see that mother has no consideration for father and they grow up to have none4 ,she never tells them that they must not even ask for something they desire because business is bad and their father is harassed and worried about money4 ,she never tells them that they must stay at home and let father have a little trip1 because he is sick and nerve-worn4 ,she lets them wring the last penny out of him with no more feeling for him than if he were some sort of automatic device worked by her for supplying their desires and needs4 ,other women teach their children to despise their fathers by always criticizing them and calling attention to their faults4 ,they are forever telling the children that their fathers are lacking in enterprise1 that they are poor business men1 that they are too easy and let people take advantage of them1 that they are high-tempered and hard to get along with1 that they have this and that weakness1 until the child's mind is thoroughly poisoned with the idea that his father amounts to nothing and his opinions are not to be respected4 ,very few women ever deliberately set themselves to teach their children to love and appreciate their fathers4 ,very few women ever try to make their children see their fathers as heroes who1 for their sakes1 are fighting the battle of life as bravely and gallantly as any knight of old4 ,very few women teach their children to show any gratitude to the fathers who have sacrificed so much for them4 ,why so many women fail in this important duty is partly through carelessness and a lack of thought1 but mostly because of an unconscious mother jealousy4 ,they want to be first with their children and monopolize their love4 ,but it is a cruel thing to the child1 and to the father4 ,it robs them both of so much joy in each other that they miss4 ,v ,,strike ,a ,,balance ,,with ,,matrimony ,i get hundreds upon hundreds of letters from disgruntled wives bemoaning their fates4 ,they tell me that they are sick and weary of the monotony of domestic drudgery2 that they have few amusements2 that their husbands are indifferent to them and never pay them any compliments or show them any affection2 that their husbands find fault with them for their every mistake1 but never give them one word of praise for all the good work they do4 ,and these women have brooded over the hardships of their lot until they have grown morbid and they see the world as one great gob of gloom1 with themselves as the blackest spot in it4 ,without doubt1 marriage is a cruel and a bitter disappointment to nine-tenths of those who enter into the holy estate4 ,especially is it disillusioning to women because they build such impossible hopes upon it1 and go into it with such a blind faith that they are going to find it an earthly paradise4 ,it is incredible1 but it is true1 that despite her lifelong knowledge of the daily life her mother has led and her observation of the domestic strife in the households of her married friends and neighbors1 every girl honestly believes that her own matrimonial venture will be a perpetual picnic1 and that the man she marries will remain the perfect lover4 ,of course1 it doesn't happen1 and when the woman finds out that her own marriage brings her more kicks than ha'pence2 when she realizes that she must share the common lot2 when she has to bend her back to the hard and dreary labor of making a family comfortable1 for which she gets neither the glad hand nor a pay envelope1 and when she has to put up with a man who seems to have cornered the whole visible supply of pure cussedness1 why1 it gets upon her nerves1 and she feels like flunking it4 ,so she beats upon her breast and cries out that this is not the marriage of which she dreamed4 ,this sordid existence is not what she married for4 ,of course1 it isn't4 ,but it is marriage as it is4 ,none of us realize our ideals4 ,our dreams never come true4 ,and even when we get what we want1 it is so warped and twisted that it is no longer the object of our desires1 and we have paid for it more than it is worth4 ,that is life4 ,to these unhappy wives ,i would offer this bit of homely counsel3 ,sit down1 sisters1 and have a real heart-to-heart session with your own souls4 ,put out of your mind firmly and for all time the idiotic idea that there is any lot of perfect peace and happiness1 any road you might have traveled that is not strewn with tacks4 ,worry and anxiety and sickness and sorrow and disappointment and loneliness are the portion alike of the highest and the lowest1 and you cannot escape the human lot4 ,it is life4 ,then take a calm and dispassionate survey of your own situation4 ,you will find your work tiresome and monotonous4 ,so does every other person in the world find his or hers4 ,the thing we do for our daily bread is bound to become a grind4 ,do you think for a moment that the banker doesn't get sick and weary of grappling with credits and loans2 that the author doesn't have to flog himself to his desk2 that the actor doesn't weary of the lines he has said over thousands of times2 that the film star is not nauseated with grease paint8 ,every one thrills to his task at first as you did to your new pots and pans and bridal furniture4 ,but the novelty wears off1 and then comes the long1 grim stretch of carrying on1 because it is your job to which you have set your hand and which you mean to make a good job just because it is yours4 ,that is life4 ,you complain that your husband takes your good work as a matter of course1 but he howls loud and long over your mistakes4 ,that is what happens to all workers4 ,if you were a stenographer and spelled one word wrong2 if you were a saleswoman and made one error in your calculations1 your boss would pass over the thousands of words you had spelled correctly and the hundreds of good sales you had made1 to call you down for your blunder4 ,if you were a writer or an actor1 you would find that the critics would forget all the good work you had done to call attention to the weakness of your new book1 or bemoan the performance you gave in a new part4 ,as long as we walk straight no one notices it1 but when we fall off the path we attract attention4 ,it is life4 ,these unhappy wives ask1 8,what shall ,i do80 and one knows not how to answer the question4 ,to tell them that1 if they are patient and forbearing1 and go on doing their duty as wives1 they can change mean husbands into good ones is to tell them a wicked lie1 and mislead them with false hopes4 ,the leopard changes his spots just about as often as a man does his disposition1 and ,i have yet to see the tightwad become generous2 the surly1 glum man turn into a ray of sunshine in his home2 or the hard1 cold1 selfish man become the perfect lover to his wife4 ,nor is divorce the solution of the unhappy wife's problem4 ,marriage is not an episode of which you can say when you get a divorce1 8,this unpleasant chapter of my life is ended4 ,i will shut the book1 and forget all about it1 and be perfectly happy henceforth40 ,marriage sets its ineffaceable seal upon a woman1 it colors her whole life2 and divorce can no more give her back her lost joy1 and faith1 and trust1 than it can restore her lost girlhood4 ,besides1 there are nearly always children to consider2 children whose welfare a good mother places above her own2 children for whom a home must be kept together2 children who must be educated2 who must be started in life1 who need a father's support and control4 ,divorce is not for the woman with children unless conditions are absolutely intolerable4 ,and for the woman herself divorce is often a jumping out of the frying pan into the fire1 for when she finds that she is rid of an unkind husband1 she has to face a world that is unkinder still4 ,generally the woman has no private fortune4 ,the courts award her but a meager alimony1 and the collecting of that is generally about the hardest job on earth4 ,she is trained to no business or occupation4 ,nobody wants her services1 and she comes to know that the grumbling of an ill-tempered husband is no harder to endure than the howl of the wolf outside of her door4 ,perhaps the best advice that one can offer these unhappy wives is to try to forget what they expected of marriage1 and to just put it on a business basis1 so much for so much1 with a settled determination to make the best of a bad bargain4 ,their little flier in ,heart's ,consolidated hasn't paid the dividends they expected it to4 ,well1 our speculations seldom do4 ,their matrimonial partners have proved hard to get along with4 ,well1 many business men endure cranky men partners1 who rasp their nerves1 for the sake of the good of the firm4 ,and on the credit side of the ledger the unhappy wife can set this down1 that she has1 at least1 her home1 and her settled position in society1 and they are great gain4 ,it takes years and years of struggle and striving for the lone woman to reach the goal where she can have her own house1 and gather about her the household gods that women worship1 and that bless one by their presence4 ,i am not arguing that a woman would consider a house1 no matter if it were a palace1 a satisfactory substitute for a tender1 loving husband1 but ,i am trying to induce the woman who has an indifferent husband to realize that she is not half as badly off as she thinks she is1 as long as she has her creature comforts4 ,fortunately1 the law of compensation always holds4 ,the man who is a poor husband is often a good provider4 ,flirtatious husbands often atone for their sidesteppings with diamonds and furs4 ,stingy ones leave women rich widows4 ,even grouches leave their wives free to amuse themselves in their own way4 ,after all1 life is a series of compromises4 ,if we don't get the best1 we are very foolish to throw away the second best and the wise woman who finds marriage a failure doesn't go into physical and spiritual bankruptcy4 ,she gets the best out of what she has4 ,she makes the most of her bargain4 ,all of which just boils down into this3 ,dry your eyes on your best embroidered towels1 ,o ye disgruntled sisters1 and realize that you are not so unfortunate as you think you are1 and what you are called upon to bear is just life4 ,,vi ,,jealousy ,a woman wants to know if there is any cure for jealousy4 ,she says that she knows her husband loves her devotedly4 ,he is true and faithful to her4 ,he is as domesticated as the house cat and casts no roving eye at the pretty flappers4 ,nevertheless1 every time he speaks to another woman she endures grinding torments of suspicion4 ,there is only one cure for jealousy4 ,that is to use a little common sense1 but this puts the remedy out of the reach of the green-eyed1 because jealousy is a form of insanity4 ,it is a lack of mental balance that makes people imagine things that do not exist1 that causes them to see deep1 dark plots in the most innocent acts and that makes them deliberately torture themselves by believing that the ones that they love most are traitors to them4 ,also1 it is what the alienists call 8the exaggerated ego0 that makes any man or woman believe that he or she can supply another individual's whole need of human companionship4 ,for jealousy isn't confined solely to lovers4 ,some of the most acute attacks are the jealousy that men and women feel for their in-laws4 ,sometimes parents are even jealous of their own children4 ,wives are often jealous of their husband's business1 and always jealous of the old friends of their bachelor days4 ,but however and wherever it is1 and no matter how causeless and needless it may be1 jealousy poisons the life and ruins the happiness of all of those who indulge in it4 ,it is the source of endless quarrels between husbands and wives1 and it slays love quicker than any other one thing4 ,indeed1 the jealous bring down the curse they fear upon their own heads4 ,by their suspicions the jealous materialize the very thing they most dread1 for there is no surer way of driving a man or a woman into philandering than by keeping dangling continually before his or her eyes a romantic possibility in which he or she is likely to indulge at any moment4 ,many a married man would never think of himself as a lady-killer--in fact1 he would consider that he was married and settled1 and done with sentimental episodes1 except that his wife keeps alive his belief in himself as a heart-smasher by her jealousy4 ,if she considers him so fascinating that she is afraid to let him have a casual conversation with another woman1 or take a turn around a ballroom floor with a pretty girl1 he argues that he must be some sheik4 ,and so he buys him some ,klassy ,kut ,kollege ,klothes and sets his hat on the side of his head and proceeds to justify her once groundless suspicions4 ,furthermore1 jealousy is its own undoing1 because it strikes a death blow at our personal liberty1 which is dearer to us and more necessary to our happiness than any man or woman ever is4 ,none of us likes to be called upon to furnish an alibi4 ,none of us enjoys being put through a questionnaire about everything that was said to us and everything we said4 ,none of us but resents not being free to go and come as we like within reasonable bounds and to hold ordinary social intercourse with any one we choose4 ,so if husbands and wives went about deliberately to kill every particle of affection that their mates have for them1 they could take no better way to do it than by spying upon them1 by attributing unworthy motives to them1 by curtailing their freedom and by making such jealous scenes that1 for the sake of peace1 they are forced to lie and deceive4 ,besides1 jealousy is an unforgivable insult4 ,there are women who have conniption fits every time their husbands make themselves agreeable to their dinner partners or take a chance-met old woman friend out to lunch4 ,there are wives who never believe that their husbands can admire a beautiful woman or enjoy the society of a brilliant one innocently4 ,they attribute the basest motives to the men they love and accuse them not only of being faithless1 but of the grossest animalism1 which was far and away from the thoughts of the poor gentlemen4 ,finally1 jealousy is an indication of the inferiority complex4 ,the woman who is jealous of all other women in her heart believes them all her superiors4 ,she believes them better looking1 more intelligent1 more charming1 with more attraction for her husband than she has4 ,that is why she is so afraid of their getting him away from her4 ,you can't imagine a queen being jealous of a milkmaid or a ,lillian ,russell being jealous of an ugly duckling1 or a star dancer not being willing to have her husband to tread a measure with some lump of a girl who would walk all over his feet4 ,all of this being true1 then1 the way to cure jealousy is to apply common sense to the situation4 ,try to look at it fairly and squarely4 ,in the first place1 your husband or wife wouldn't have married you if he or she hadn't preferred you to every one else in the world4 ,if you had charm before marriage you have it still1 if you will take the trouble to use it4 ,in the second place1 you know that you enjoy talking to other people1 and that your contact with them is perfectly harmless4 ,why not believe your husband or wife is as decent as you are8 ,in the third place1 why keep your husband or wife always fed up with the idea that he or she is a fascinator that no woman or man can resist8 ,it makes them want to try and see if they can stand them up4 ,and lastly1 if you are married to a man or woman whom you believe to have so little truth and honor1 and who cares so little for you that he or she can't be trusted out of your sight1 why worry about him or about her8 ,he or she isn't worth a single pang of jealousy4 ,,vii ,,have ,a ,,goal ,the great trouble with the majority of women is that they have no plan of life1 no real objective4 ,they are the victims of fads4 ,they wobble about from interest to interest4 ,the thing they were crazy about yesterday they throw into the discard to-day4 ,they waste their time1 and energy1 and ability in pursuing will-o'-the-wisps4 ,like the hero of the popular song1 they are on their way1 but they don't know where they are going4 ,this is why so many women fail1 as is abundantly proved by the fact that when a woman does make up her mind about what she wants to do1 when she has one settled ambition instead of a lot of vague desires1 she is almost invariably successful4 ,let her once determine to tread a definite path and she not only arrives1 but she arrives with bells on4 ,of course1 the reason that women tackle the business of existence in this hit-or-miss fashion is not really their fault1 poor dears4 ,it is because of the idiotic way in which we bring up girls on the assumption that each one has a regiment of fairy godmothers and guardian angels looking after her and taking care of her1 so that she doesn't need to bother her pretty little head about learning how to take care of herself4 ,so we don't teach a girl1 as we do a boy1 that our lives are just what we make them1 that we are the architects of our own fate1 and that whether our lives are ugly1 and botchy1 and of little worth1 or beautiful1 and well-rounded1 and valuable1 depends upon our having some plan of life in our heads and working to it4 ,we tell the boy that he who is jack-of-all-trades is good at none1 and that if he wishes to be a carpenter1 or a master plumber1 or a bank president1 or a surgeon1 he must serve his apprenticeship in his chosen trade or profession and concentrate on the study of it if he means to succeed4 ,he will never get anywhere as long as he goes from job to job and dabbles first at one thing and then at another4 ,but we don't teach girls that it is just as important for them to have some definite plan of life and prepare themselves to do some particular work as it is for their brothers4 ,most girls in these days have to earn their own living until they are married4 ,but most of them do just as little work as they can get by with1 and they do this little aimlessly4 ,here and there is a stenographer who works by a plan4 ,she has set herself to become a highly paid private secretary4 ,here and there is a shop-girl who has her eye on a buyer's job and trips to ,europe4 ,here and there is a milliner or a dressmaker whose dream is of her own shop4 ,here and there is a boarding-house keeper whose ambition it is to run a hotel4 ,very seldom do these women fail to attain their desires4 ,they know what they are trying to do and they make every lick of work count4 ,they bend every energy to one end instead of wasting it on a hundred ineffectual endeavors4 ,they put their backs1 their hearts1 their brains into their work and that combination invariably spells success4 ,but the great majority of working women simply potter purposelessly along4 ,they don't expect to do what they are doing very long1 and so they don't take the trouble to try to learn how to do it well4 ,they have no interest in their work1 no ambition4 ,they haven't even bothered to pick out the thing to do for which they have a natural aptitude4 ,they have taken up the occupation they follow just because they happened to do so4 ,they don't give a single lobe of their brain to studying it or trying to fit themselves to be competent4 ,they take life as casually as that4 ,yet they may have to do this same work for thirty or forty years1 for it is by no means certain that every girl will get a husband or that the husband will be able to support her if she does get him4 ,women do not even have any plan about following the great career of wifehood and motherhood to which they all look forward4 ,probably every girl who goes to the altar desires to be a good wife and mother4 ,but she does not crystallize these vague intentions into any concrete plan of action4 ,not one woman in a thousand sits down in her bridal bungalow or apartment and works out a scheme for handling her husband without friction1 for running her house economically and for making her marriage a success4 ,on the contrary1 she trusts it all to luck4 ,if she is a good housekeeper1 she feeds her husband well4 ,if she doesn't like to cook1 she gives him dyspepsia by sitting him down to dinners of underdone meat and overdone bread and watery vegetables4 ,if she is amiable and good-natured1 she gets along with him4 ,if she is high tempered1 she rows with him4 ,if she is thrifty1 she saves his money and they prosper4 ,if she is extravagant1 she runs him into debt4 ,it is because wives have no plan about what they do as wives that matrimony is such a gamble4 ,and it is the same way about motherhood4 ,there is no other thought in the world so terrible as that mothers bring up their children without any plan about what they are trying to make them4 ,they are shaping an immortal soul1 and they don't even know what they are trying to make of it4 ,that is the capital crime of aimlessness4 ,women will never succeed until they conquer this weakness and learn how to plan their lives4 ,you cannot do anything effectively unless you know what you are trying to do4 ,,viii ,,the ,,goat ,,family ,kind reader1 meet my friends1 the ,goats4 ,they are not rich1 for1 altho ,mr4 ,goat has been an able and energetic business man all his life1 and ,mrs4 ,goat has been a thrifty housekeeper1 they have never been able to get much ahead because they have always had such a horde of parasites to support4 ,ever since they had a home they have run a free hotel4 ,they have literally been eaten out of house and home by self-invited guests1 by forty-seventh cousins who always cashed in the blood relationship for board and lodging1 and by old friends who suddenly remembered1 when they happened to be in their town1 how they loved the ,goats and hated to pay for their own beds and meals4 ,any one of their many acquaintances who wished to take a vacation without expense1 or have an operation performed1 or go to the opera1 or see the sights of the city1 just wished himself or herself on the ,goats1 and arrived bag and baggage to camp in the spare bedroom4 ,and that was all there was to it2 a pleasant and economical arrangement so far as the guests were concerned4 ,and if it was inconvenient to the ,goats and they had to sleep around on cots and do without new clothes to pay for the food that the deadbeats gobbled up1 why1 nobody bothered about that4 ,and the ,goats never complained4 ,they never made a move to chuck these grafters out1 not even rich ,cousin ,susan1 who could have bought the family up a hundred times over1 when she came and stayed six months1 wore ,mother ,goat to a frazzle waiting on her and ran them into debt because she couldn't eat anything but the most expensive foods4 ,no1 they feel that it would be a stain on their escutcheon to assert themselves and look out for themselves a little1 and so they lived up to the ,goat coat-of-arms1 which is a doormat couchant1 with everybody trampling over it4 ,by and by the eldest ,miss ,goat got married4 ,her husband proved to be a bumptious1 egotistical1 opinionated fellow1 and when he was about the whole ,goat family had to walk on eggs and suppress all their own opinions and tastes to avoid irritating him4 ,indeed1 when their daughter married1 the ,goats acquired a new son1 as the phrase goes1 because every ,sunday and on high days and holidays the young couple arrived to take dinner with papa and mamma4 ,it was so sweet to be all together at such times1 and it was also so economical and saved them the work and worry of getting their own dinner4 ,then the son ,billy got married4 ,not being born a ,goat1 ,billy's wife had not the suffer-and-be-strong complex in her4 ,on the contrary1 she was a go-getter1 and what she wanted she had to have4 ,therefore1 ,father ,goat was often called on for money to help pay ,mrs4 ,billy's bills1 which had to be met regardless of what sacrifice it entailed on the ,goats at home4 ,mrs4 ,billy died1 and1 of course1 ,billy took his motherless children1 one of them a tiny baby1 back home for mother and sister to take care of4 ,they did it for a few years1 until ,billy married again1 altho it reduced poor1 worn-out mother to a physical wreck4 ,the family didn't approve of ,billy's choice of a second wife1 but1 with the ,goat faculty for swallowing anything1 they accepted her and felt that at least one burden would be removed from them and that ,billy would take his children and set up his own home4 ,it appears1 however1 that the second wife refuses to be bothered with stepchildren1 and so ,billy has brought his brood back for mother and sister to rear and support4 ,it takes all the money he can make to provide for his wife and her relatives whom she has saddled upon him4 ,mother ,goat says that no sacrifice is too great to make for her darling son1 nor does she hesitate to offer up as a burnt offering her unmarried daughter1 ,nanny ,goat1 who labors in an office all day to make the money to help maintain the family1 and who comes home at night and does most of the housework4 ,but ,nanny is beginning to show un-,goatlike traits4 ,she doesn't see why she should work to feed a lot of bum company who sponge on them instead of paying their own board somewhere4 ,she doesn't see why she should spend her ,sundays and holidays1 cooking dinners for sister and brother and the in-laws when they might just as well eat at home or go to a restaurant4 ,and she doesn't see what right brother has to foist the care of his children and their support on his old parents and his young sister4 8,i am spending my life slaving for other people and bearing other people's burdens10 wails poor little ,nanny ,goat4 8,i earn a good salary1 but ,i can never have any pretty clothes or indulge myself in any of the amusements ,i crave1 because all my money is spent on people who just make a convenience of us1 and who think more of being invited somewhere else to tea than they do of living on us without cost for a month4 ,all my youth1 when ,i ought to have the pleasures of the young1 is being given to trying to raise my brother's children1 and do for them the things that he himself is too weak and pusillanimous to do4 ,and ,i am sick and tired of it4 ,i am tired of supporting grafters that are more able to work than ,i am4 ,i am sick of being bled white by blood-suckers4 ,i am sore at having to do other people's duty for them1 and ,i want to know how ,i can get out of being a perpetual ,goat as long as ,i live40 ,alas6 poor little ,nanny1 it is easier for the leopard to change its spots than it is for one who was born a ,goat to cease being one4 ,still1 the thing can be done1 if you have nerve enough to butt your way to freedom4 ,shut the door in the face of the deadbeat visitors4 ,make your brother act the part of a man and assume his own responsibilities4 ,and you will find that you have gained not only relief but that you have gone up a hundred per cent in every one's esteem4 ,for while we all make use of the ,goat family1 we hold them in contempt because they let us make goats of them4 ,,ix ,,spoiling ,a ,,wife ,a man asks3 8,can a husband be too good to his wife80 ,yes4 ,a husband can be too good to his wife4 ,so can a wife be too good to her husband4 ,husbands and wives are just as easily spoiled as babies are1 and they react to spoiling exactly the same way that babies do4 ,they become peevish1 and fretful1 and unreasonable4 ,they howl for the moon4 ,the more they are given in to1 the more they demand and the more unrelenting their tyranny becomes4 ,they smash things in sheer wantonness1 and they need nothing on earth so much as to be turned across somebody's knee and given a good spanking1 and made to behave themselves4 ,all of us know plenty of men and women1 with many fine and noble qualities1 who would have made splendid husbands and wives if they had not been badly spoiled by their overindulgent wives and husbands4 ,but instead of being disciplined1 and forced to control themselves1 and made to act like reasonable human beings1 they had their weaknesses indulged1 their selfishness encouraged1 their exactions given in to1 until they became a curse to themselves and to those who had the misfortune to be married to them4 ,of course1 when my correspondent speaks of a man being 8good0 to his wife1 he means it in the sense of being indulgent to her4 ,no man can be too good to his wife in the way of being kind1 and tender1 and sympathetic1 and just1 and fair to her4 ,but he is not good to her--in fact1 he does her a cruel wrong--when he is overly indulgent to her4 ,he ruins her life no less than his own because the spoiled wife is never happy4 ,she is always discontented1 restless1 dissatisfied1 wanting something she hasn't got and that is just beyond her reach4 ,she thinks only of herself1 and her pleasures1 and the self-centered can always find flaws in their lot4 ,the only contented wives are those who are doing their part toward making their marriage a success4 ,the grafting wives are always whiny1 and complaining1 and disgruntled4 ,a man1 for instance1 is too good to his wife when he lets her lie down on her end of the matrimonial partnership4 ,his part of the contract is to work and make the money to support a home4 ,her part is to make a comfortable home4 ,there are many women who refuse to do this1 and who force their husbands to live around in boarding houses and hotels4 ,there are many more women who are so lazy and shiftless that they keep their houses as dirty as pigstys1 and never give their husbands a meal that isn't a first-aid to the undertaker4 ,there are men who have to get up and get their own breakfasts before they start to business1 while their good-for-nothing wives slumber and sleep4 ,there are men who have to come home after a hard day's work and help get the dinner1 and wash the dishes1 and bathe the baby1 and sweep the floors1 and do all the housework that their trifling wives have left undone4 ,nothing but being a bedridden invalid excuses a woman for not doing her share of the work and for not feeding her family on properly cooked food1 and any man is very silly who puts up with slack housekeeping from an able-bodied wife4 ,she would get busy quickly enough with the broom and the cookbook if she knew she would lose her job unless she made her man comfortable4 ,a man is too good to his wife--or too bad to her--when he lets her ruin him with her extravagance4 ,there are men of ability1 men who are industrious1 men who are filled with ambition and who were on the high road to success when they married4 ,but they got spenders and wasters for wives1 and thereafter their lives became just a frantic struggle to keep even with the bill collector4 ,strive as they would1 they could never get ahead4 ,they had to let every opportunity pass them because they never had a cent to put into any enterprise4 ,every dollar had gone to pay for the wife's clothes1 and entertaining1 and trying to keep up with people better off than they4 ,the man who never says 8,no0 to his wife's ceaseless demands on his pocketbook may think that he is being good to her1 but in reality he could do her no worse turn4 ,for you can no more satisfy a greedy woman than you can a greedy child4 ,such women are the daughters of the ,scriptural horse leech1 forever crying3 8,more1 more1 more60 ,and in the end1 when the crash comes1 the extravagant wife is crushed under the ruin she has brought upon her household4 ,a man is too good to his wife when he makes all of the sacrifices and she monopolizes all of the privileges4 ,there are households in which the husband has no rights or consideration whatever4 ,he goes shabby1 while wife is arrayed like ,solomon in all his glory4 ,he walks1 while wife rides around in a limousine4 ,he stays at home1 while wife goes forth to summer and winter resorts4 ,his tastes1 his comfort1 his pleasure are never considered4 ,he cultivates selfishness in his wife by never demanding a square deal from her and by never making her give as well as take4 ,and his reward is his wife's contempt1 for no woman respects a man upon whom she can wipe her feet4 ,oh1 yes1 a man can easily be too good to his wife4 ,the really good husbands are not those who make spoiled babies of their wives1 but those who encourage their wives to develop into self-controlled1 helpful1 useful women4 ,x ,,the ,,absence ,,cure ,,for ,,family ,,ills ,one of the most pathetic things on earth is the unnecessary unhappiness we endure4 ,the big1 heartbreaking tragedies no one may escape4 ,the loss of those we love4 ,frustrated hopes4 ,disappointments4 ,despair4 ,these are the inevitable portion of humanity1 and there is dignity in meeting them with courage4 ,but to have your life poisoned by the sting of a gnat2 to be done to death by pin pricks1 to be robbed of your happiness by petty aggravations1 that is a different matter1 and one rages alike against the futility of it1 and the ignominy of it4 ,and1 curiously enough1 we neither endure with fortitude these little1 petty ills that spoil the peace of our days1 nor do we try to seek a remedy for them4 ,take family troubles1 for example1 which are responsible for more real1 heartbreaking1 never-ending misery than anything else in the world4 ,a man and a woman drawn together by some fleeting physical attraction get married4 ,when that is over1 they find that they have not one thing on earth in common4 ,their tastes differ on everything from politics to pie4 ,their every idea and opinion is antagonistic4 ,they do not think the same thoughts1 or speak the same language4 ,they may be people of the highest integrity1 models of all the virtues4 ,they may try to do their duty nobly and with self-sacrifice4 ,but their home is a dark and bloody battleground where they fight over every topic like dogs over a bone1 and they make life a hell on earth for each other4 ,sometimes parents and children cannot get along together4 ,sometimes a nice1 domestic old hen hatches out a swan4 ,sometimes a swan finds that nature has bestowed an ugly duckling upon her1 and great is the clacking1 and the clucking1 and the feather-picking around the barnyard4 ,often brothers and sisters cannot agree4 ,they clash on every subject under the sun4 ,they express their opinions of each other with the brutal candor of near relationship1 and leave each other sullen and sore with resentment4 ,they never sit down to a meal without being verbally armed to the teeth1 and the maimed survivors feel as if they had been through the battle of the ,marne4 ,sometimes there is just one particular member of a family who is a perpetual storm center1 and who has but to blow in at the door to shatter the peace and harmony of the household4 ,being obliged to live with disagreeable and antagonistic people is the greatest affliction that can possibly befall us4 ,nothing compensates for it4 ,not tho we dwell in a palace1 with every meal a banquet1 and have everything that money can buy us4 ,better it is to dwell on a housetop1 or in a lodging house1 and eat at a quick lunch place1 and have peace1 than abide in splendor with those who irritate the very soul out of us4 ,nor are we consoled by the fact that the very people who are so impossible to live with love us well enough to die for us4 ,we know well enough that it is mother's affection for us1 and her anxiety about us1 that makes her nag us incessantly1 and hand out advice to us until we are ready to scream4 ,in their philosophical moments men and women realize that even their in-laws knock them for their own good4 ,but it is the result1 and not the theory1 with which we are concerned1 and as you listen to the wail of those who cry out against uncongenial marriages1 and the moans of anguish of the in-laws who dwell under the same roof1 and listen to the sounds of fratricidal strife1 when everybody could be so happy if they didn't have to live with each other1 you wonder that so few people have the wisdom and the courage to apply the one sure cure for their misery4 ,that is to separate4 ,apart they would be happy4 ,they would even love each other4 ,they would get a perspective on each other's good qualities4 ,but living together they merely get on each other's nerves1 and hate each other4 ,the old idea that blood is thicker than water1 and that just because you happen to be born in a certain relationship to a group of individuals makes you automatically love them1 and desire their society1 hasn't a word of truth in it4 ,it is not even true in the relationship between parents and children4 ,as long as their children are young and helpless1 most mothers have an animal fondness for them4 ,but when they are older1 it very often happens that a mother cannot get along in peace with her children4 ,she does not understand them4 ,she has nothing in common with them1 and she is glad enough when they are grown and leave home4 ,no theory has been more mischievous than the old convention that people who were of the same family had to keep on living together1 no matter how much they rubbed each other the wrong way1 nor how unpleasant this enforced companionship was4 ,there is no sense in doing it4 ,no rhyme nor reason for it4 ,because ,aunt ,jane is ,aunt ,jane is no reason why you should take her into your home and be bored the balance of your life by her reminiscences1 nor is there any reason why you should have your temper continually rasped by antagonistic sisters and brothers when there are plenty of agreeable strangers in the world4 ,try the absence cure on your domestic troubles4 ,get up and leave an unpleasant home4 ,you have no idea how much better you will love a lot of your relatives when you put about a thousand miles between you and them4 ,,xi ,,the ,,deadly ,,rival ,it would be interesting to know how many estranged husbands and wives began drifting apart with the advent of the first baby4 ,children are popularly supposed to be the tie that binds a man and woman indissolubly together in body and spirit in marriage4 ,often this is true1 and in their love and hopes and ambitions for their children a husband and wife literally do become 8two souls with but a single thought1 two hearts that beat as one40 ,also very often for the sake of their children men and women endure a marriage that they have come to loathe and hate1 and are bound together like prisoners whose balls and chains clank at every movement they make4 ,unhappily1 children's hands do not always draw husbands and wives closer together4 ,they just as often push them apart1 and when this happens it is oftener the woman's fault than the man's4 ,few men prefer their children above their wives1 but for the great majority of women their husbands exist only as their children's father and as purveyors to their children4 ,the first baby definitely and for all time puts the husband's nose out of joint4 ,up to that time1 husband has been king of the domestic realm4 ,his wife has put on her prettiest clothes and adorned herself for him4 ,she has been chum and playmate4 ,she has exerted herself to amuse and entertain him4 ,she has looked out for his comfort1 has seen that he had the best of everything1 and he has reveled in the bliss of having the center of the stage and the spotlight turned always upon him4 ,then arrives the baby1 and from having been the worshiped head of the house1 husband finds that he is nothing1 with no one so poor as to do him reverence4 ,wife no longer cares what sort of a figure she cuts in his eyes1 or whether he admires her or not4 ,she looks sloppy around the house because the baby pulls at her clothes and musses her chiffons4 ,when husband wants to go out at night she refuses because she can't leave the baby1 and if he drags her along anyway1 she interrupts the most thrilling part of a play to ask him if he thinks the nurse has forgotten to give the baby his bottle4 ,there are no more chatty evenings at home1 because she is off worshiping before the baby's shrine4 ,she quits reading anything but baby books1 and her conversation gets to be about as stimulating as sterilized milk4 ,she is too busy with the baby to show her husband any of the little attentions that men so love1 or to see even that he has the things he likes to eat4 ,there are thousands of homes which are run exclusively for the children4 ,there is never any food on the table except just the simple things that children can eat4 ,there is never any conversation except about the children4 ,the wife never manifests the slightest interest in her husband1 or shows him any affection4 ,all of the tenderness1 the caresses1 the sympathy and understanding is lavished on the children4 ,it is the children's likes and dislikes and prejudices that are remembered and catered to4 ,there are many wives who begrudge every cent that a husband spends on himself because they want the money to throw away on the children4 ,they will nag their husbands into giving up smoking so that they can buy the baby a real lace cap4 ,there are wives who literally work their husbands to death that their daughters may go off to finishing schools1 and their boys have the latest model sports automobile4 ,now the average man loves his children1 but he has not this crazy1 obsessing passion for them that their mother has4 ,when the first baby comes he is proud of it and fond of it1 and he wants it to have every proper care and attention1 but he doesn't want to spend hours sitting by its crib1 gloating over it and marveling at how naturally it breathes4 ,he wants to go about the ordinary affairs of life as he did before the baby was born1 and he wants his wife's companionship4 ,but she will seldom go with him1 and when she does1 she is no fun because she doesn't enter into the spirit of anything4 ,she has left her whole interest in life behind in the nursery4 ,nor is she an entertaining companion at home any more4 ,and it gets on his nerves being told to 8sh-h-h-h-sh0 every time he shuts the door1 for fear he will wake the baby4 ,he even discovers that his wife is relieved when he goes out without her1 and leaves her undisturbed to her infant adoration4 ,and so the rift is first made between them4 ,each starts on a life in which the other has no part1 and that takes them farther away from each other as the years go by4 ,if the true co-respondent were ever named in many a divorce case1 it would be the first baby4 ,there are always plenty of women a man can find who will play with him while his wife is busy in the nursery2 who will listen to him and flatter him1 while his wife is telling the baby he is the most boofulest thing in the world4 ,while mama is holding the baby's hand1 some vamp is generally holding papa's4 ,it is a great thing to be a good mother1 but it is equally as great a thing to be a good wife4 ,and it is a bad thing to do either one at the expense of the other4 ,often children are better off for a little wholesome neglect1 but a husband never is4 ,remember that1 ladies1 and don't make your baby your husband's deadly rival4 ,,xii ,,learn ,a ,,trade1 ,,girls ,these few lines are addressed to the thousands of girls who have finished school and who are now standing1 as the poet puts it1 8where the brook and river meet0 wondering 8where do we go from here80 ,i want to urge you1 girls1 with all the earnestness of which ,i am capable1 to psychoanalyze yourselves and try to find out what talents and aptitudes nature bestowed upon you1 and then to go to some school where you can develop your gift and fit yourself to be self-supporting4 ,i give this advice to the rich girl no less than to the poor girl1 for in these days of shifting fortunes we have the new poor as well as the new rich1 and no woman knows how soon she may be called upon to earn her own bread and butter or starve4 ,if she has been taught how to do this1 losing her money is merely an inconvenience to her2 but if she does not know how to earn a dollar1 it is a tragedy4 ,no women in the world are so pitiful as those who have1 as the saying goes1 8seen better days0 and1 with their money gone1 are suddenly flung out into the world to make their own living1 with no trade1 no profession1 no skill in any line1 no knowledge of how to make a penny4 ,they can only eke out an existence by doing the most ill-paid work1 or else they become parasites1 or are forced by hunger1 and shabbiness1 and need into the sad sisterhood of the streets4 ,don't risk such a fate befalling you4 ,prepare yourself in time against it4 ,have that within yourself which will not be affected by the fall in stocks or the depreciation of real estate4 ,many things may rob you of your fortune1 but you cannot lose your trained brain and skilful hand4 ,they will be a resource that you can always fall back upon in any emergency4 ,of course ,i know1 when ,i urge you girls to fit yourselves to learn some gainful occupation by which you can support yourselves1 that you smile and say to yourselves that you do not expect to earn your own living long4 ,you are going to marry and follow woman's oldest profession1 that of wife and mother4 ,that is as may be4 ,in the past the great majority of women have been able to count1 with a fair degree of safety1 on being able to marry1 but it is by no means a foregone conclusion that the girl of to-day will get a husband4 ,there has been a most decided decline and falloff in matrimony and home life1 and it is foolish for girls to think that they have the same chance of marrying that their mothers and grandmothers had4 ,now1 for the girl who is sitting around and waiting for some man to come along and marry her1 it is a catastrophe to be passed by4 ,she becomes the sour and disgruntled old maid1 eating the bitter bread of dependence1 the fringe on some family that doesn't want her4 ,or else she has to take any sort of a poor stick of a man as a prop to lean upon4 ,far different is it with the girl who has fitted herself for some definite work and is competently doing it4 ,she has a profession in which she is vitally interested4 ,she has an occupation which fills her time4 ,she makes enough money to indulge herself in the luxuries that women love1 and so marriage becomes to her merely an incident of life1 not the whole thing4 ,if the right man comes along1 well and good4 ,if not1 also well and good4 ,she has her pleasant1 independent1 interesting life as a girl bachelor4 ,the world to her is full of such a number of things besides wedding rings4 ,furthermore1 girls1 even if you do marry1 you may still need to keep on being a bread-winner instead of becoming a breadmaker4 ,the high cost of living has to be reckoned with1 and not every man under present economic conditions is able to support a family alone and unaided4 ,in the past the good wife helped her husband by doing the housework1 and turning1 and mending1 and pinching the pennies4 ,in the future the good wife will doubtless help her husband by keeping on with her well-paid job and assisting in making the money to give her family the living conditions1 and her children the education that the man alone could not afford to give them4 ,so1 except among the rich1 marriage is going to mean a retirement from business no more for women than it is for men4 ,another reason why ,i urge you1 girls1 to learn some gainful occupation and perfect yourself in it is because it will do more than any other one thing to make you happy4 ,it will keep you from being bored1 and boredom is at the root of all fretful discontent4 ,people who are busy1 who have a definite object in view and are striving to attain it1 find the day all too short1 are always content and cheerful4 ,and talk about thrills6 ,you never really know one until you hold your first pay envelope in your hand and it surges over you that the money in it represents your own work that was good enough for somebody to pay for4 ,being able to make your own living sets you free4 ,economic independence is the only independence in the world4 ,as long as you must look to another for your food and clothes you are a slave to that person4 ,you must obey him4 ,you must defer to him4 ,you must bend your will to his4 ,but when you can stand on your own feet you can snap your fingers in the face of the world and tell it where it gets off4 ,you do not have to endure tyrannical parents4 ,you do not have to put up with a cruel husband4 ,you can support yourself1 and you are free4 ,so ,i urge you1 girls1 never to rest until you have fitted yourselves to earn your own bread1 and butter1 and cake4 ,and remember1 the better your work the more you earn4 ,it is efficiency that pulls down the big pay envelope4 ,it doesn't make a bit of difference what you do1 my dear4 ,it is the way you do it that counts4 ,you can make a success or a failure of any occupation under the sun4 ,the fat pay envelope is the reward of superexcellent work4 ,it isn't the perquisite of any particular trade or profession4 ,we do best those things that we enjoy doing1 and so ,i urge you to sit down quietly and study yourself and try to find out what nature intended you to be4 ,probably you have no very decided talent1 no cosmic urge that makes you feel that you must paint1 or sing1 or dance1 or cook1 or keep books1 or else life will be dust and ashes in your mouth4 ,but you are sure to find that there is something that you like to do better than other things4 ,it may be trimming hats4 ,it may be messing around the kitchen4 ,it may be that you are quick at figures and can always remember dates4 ,it may be that you write a good hand1 or always got a hundred in spelling at school4 ,there is always some one thing for which you have a turn1 as the phrase goes1 and that points the road for you to follow4 ,if you have no mechanical skill1 don't do anything that requires deftness of the hands4 ,if you can't spell1 don't waste any time trying to be a stenographer4 ,if you cannot add up a column of figures three times without getting four different results1 pass up bookkeeping4 ,you will never make a success of anything for which you have no aptitude4 ,you will always hate it and be bored by it4 ,the successful people are those who love their work so well that it is a sheer joy to do it2 who never count the labor that they put into it1 and who are so interested in it that it is perpetually in their thoughts4 ,therefore choose the thing that you like to do and get fun out of doing1 and don't just blunder into taking the first job that presents itself or make the mistake of taking up some profession to which you are not called because some other girls are doing so or because it seems to you romantic or elegant4 ,of course1 in these days of the emancipation of women1 every road is as free for a girl to follow as it is to a boy1 but you will find that those women make the greatest successes who stick to purely feminine lines4 ,there is just as much need for woman's work in the world as there is for man's1 and when it is equally well done it is equally well paid4 ,in some occupations it is a little better paid because there are fewer women experts than there are men4 ,there are very few women who have risen from the ranks to become presidents of banks1 or trust magnates1 or big manufacturers2 but every community has in it women who have made tidy fortunes as dressmakers1 or milliners1 or boarding-house keepers4 ,teaching1 nursing1 cooking1 sewing2 home-making in all its ramifications and branches2 buying and selling pretty things2 the building and furnishing of houses2 the healing of the sick1 all of these are strictly within the feminine province1 and you will not make a mistake if you choose whichever one of these occupations appeals to your fancy4 ,women have been unconsciously trained along these lines for centuries and have for them an inherited aptitude4 ,it takes the average man years of profound study to acquire the sense of color that a girl baby is born with4 ,and any dub of a woman can give an architect points on lights1 and kitchen sinks1 and the heights of shelves and about closets4 ,so stick to your last and capitalize your feminine intuitions instead of trying to invade masculine fields4 ,even women writers and women artists are more successful when their work is most womanly4 ,and great actresses will be remembered for the feminine rles they portrayed1 not for the masculine parts they essayed and in which they were grotesque failures4 ,having selected your occupation1 perfect yourself in it4 ,master its technique4 ,don't be satisfied to be an also-ran4 ,make of yourself a blue-ribbon winner4 ,you will have to work longer hours and harder doing ill-paid work than you will doing highly paid work4 ,the difference between a #ae cook and a #aj1jjj chef is just a matter of skill4 ,one woman gets #e for a hat1 another #ej4 ,it is just the touch to a bow or ribbon or a twist to a bit of velvet that does it4 ,whether you get a thin pay envelope or a thick one as a stenographer1 or bookkeeper1 or clerk1 depends upon how expert you are4 ,so make up your mind that you are not going to work for a pittance1 and go after the big salary by making yourself worth it4 ,employers are just pining to pay the price of good work4 ,then tackle your job as if you meant to make a life-work of it4 ,don't look upon it as a bridge of sighs that you have to travel over with reluctant feet from the schoolroom to the altar4 ,think of it as something you are going to do as long as you live2 something that is going to be your friend1 and comforter1 and stay1 and to which you will give the best that is in you4 ,that won't keep you from marrying if the right man comes along1 and it will be a powerful stay if no man comes4 ,not many girls do this4 ,they regard their work as only a makeshift until they can marry1 and so they never take the trouble to learn how to do it properly4 ,that is why they fail1 and why they are ill-paid4 ,don't be one of them4 ,choose a congenial occupation and put your heart and your back into it1 and your success will be assured4 ,,xiii ,,trial ,,divorce ,i believe the one thing that would do more than anything else to stop the utter wrecking of homes and the half-orphaning of children1 in the case of unhappy marriages1 would be the institution of trial divorce and the refusal of the courts to make any divorce decree absolute under two years4 ,for so many husbands and wives think they have ceased to love each other1 when they are only too much fed up with each other's society4 ,so many persons think they long for freedom1 when they only need a rest4 ,so many persons think divorce a panacea for every ill1 who find out1 when they try it1 that the remedy is worse than the disease4 ,the great majority of men and women are romantically in love when they get married1 and they expect to live ever afterward in a state of storybook bliss4 ,then comes the inevitable disillusionment1 when they find out that they have married ordinary human beings instead of angels and motion-picture heroes4 ,comes the clash of personalities4 ,the fight of the selfish to get the best for one's self4 ,the rebellion at the sacrifices that matrimony demands4 ,the woman begins to nag4 ,the man gets grouchy and surly4 ,each magnifies every fault of the other4 ,resentment and disappointment blot out every memory of love and tenderness1 of goodness and nobility4 ,they come to the point where they feel that they cannot stand each other a minute longer and rush off to the divorce courts4 ,but the ink is hardly dry on their decrees before they begin to view each other in a kindlier light4 ,the man1 living in his club or at a boarding house1 wandering from restaurant to restaurant1 hating the cooking and getting his digestion upset1 begins to think of his ex-wife's good points4 ,how true and loyal and devoted she was6 ,what a good cook and housekeeper6 ,and he wonders that he didn't have enough sense of humor to laugh at her nagging instead of letting it get on his nerves4 ,the woman1 trying to make a home for herself with less money than she is accustomed to1 bewildered and terrified at having to face life for herself1 with no man to depend on1 begins to recall her husband's virtues instead of his faults1 and to reflect that it is better to have even a husband who is short on compliments1 and shy on attentions1 and long on knocks1 than to have no husband at all4 ,and in their secret souls both are conscience-stricken when they look at their children and see them lacking a mother's or a father's care and a real home4 ,so there are thousands of couples who are merely disgruntled with each other who would come together again if a trial divorce gave them time in which the galled spots that the matrimonial yoke has made on their necks could heal and they could find out that they hadn't got such bad teammates1 after all4 ,the trial divorce would do much to solve even those cases in which husbands and wives think that they have fallen out of love with their lawful mates and have found their affinities in others4 ,nine times out of ten the reason that men and women lose their affection for their husbands and wives is just because they are bored with them4 ,they have had an overdose of them4 ,they have seen them too long and at too close range4 ,every woman knows that when she starts off on her summer vacation she sees her husband as just a hump-shouldered1 fat1 bald-headed man1 who is slouchy about dressing2 but after she has been away a week she begins to remember what a classical nose he has4 ,in a fortnight she thinks how handsome and distinguished-looking he is1 and by the end of the month he is a perfect ,valentino to her4 ,the man has just the same reactions about his wife4 ,she goes away fat and frumpy and middle-aged1 and she returns merely plump and more attractive than any flapper to him4 ,many men and women who think they are permanently tired of their husbands and wives are only temporarily weary of looking at the same face and listening to the same line of conversation across the breakfast table1 and if a trial divorce gave them a second choice they would find that they preferred the old love to the new4 ,for the lure of the 8other woman0 and the 8other man0 is chiefly that they are unattainable and unknown1 and these charms vanish before the trial divorce that makes them possible and familiar4 ,it gives the foolish1 infatuated husband and wife a chance really to compare the long-haired poet or the short-haired flapper with the partners they had and are about to lose4 ,give a man time to forget his wife's nagging1 and his peaches-and-cream complexioned secretary will not look as good a risk1 after all1 to him as his faithful old wife4 ,give a woman time to forget the mean things her husband said to her when they quarreled1 and she will think a long time before she exchanges her good provider for some impecunious glib love-maker4 ,the truth is1 that few men and women find in divorce the solution of their woes that they expected4 ,they picture it as a state of bliss in which they will be free of all woes and cares1 an earthly paradise in which there will be no fretting wives or fault-finding husbands1 and in which they will be able to do exactly as they please4 ,but they find its golden apples ,dead ,sea fruit that turns to ashes on their lips4 ,the man who has resented his wife's tyranny and writhed under her curtain lectures1 strangely finds out that he wants to go home1 when he has no home to which to go1 and nobody to care whether he ever comes back or not4 ,the woman who has thought she would be happy if she no longer had to live with a neglectful husband1 finds that the world also neglects her and that her freedom has merely brought her the freedom of earning her own living4 ,and when this hard and bitter knowledge soaks into the consciousness of men and women many of them would be glad enough to go back again to their old husbands and wives if they could4 ,so1 when we unscramble our scrambled marriage laws1 let's put the trial divorce into them4 ,,xiv ,,marry ,,the ,,man ,,you ,,love ,a young woman wants to know whether it is better to marry the man she loves1 or the man who loves her4 ,both1 ,i should say4 ,marriage should be a mutual benefit association in which both parties give and receive2 in which they love and are loved in equal measure4 ,cupid1 however1 is no dispenser of justice4 ,he rarely holds the scales even4 ,very few husbands and wives feel the same amount of affection for each other4 ,in almost every married couple one kisses and the other submits to being kissed1 as the ,french proverb cynically puts it4 ,this being the case1 it is better for the woman to be the kisser than the kissee1 because1 while it is misfortune to a woman never to be loved1 it is a tragedy to her never to love4 ,of course1 every woman desires to be worshiped by some man1 and she dreams of having a husband who will be a perpetual lover and spend his life laying tributes at her feet4 ,she feels that she would be perfectly happy doing the goddess-on-a-pedestal act1 and occasionally deigning to bestow a kind word on her adorer1 as one throws a bone to a dog4 ,obsessed by this romantic vision1 which flatters her vanity1 many a woman is beguiled into marrying a man for whom she has only a mild liking because he is so crazy about her4 ,she thinks that he can supply enough love for two1 and that she will be happy and satisfied with just being loved4 ,it does not take her long to find out that she has made a sad mistake1 and that there is nothing with which we can get so easily satiated as we can with the affection we do not return4 ,we have no appetite for it and it is tasteless in our mouths4 ,nor are there any greater bores than those who love us1 who cling to us1 who want to be always with us1 but whom we do not love and of whom we get tired to death4 ,all of us know doormat husbands whose wives ruthlessly trample them under foot4 ,we all know peevish1 disgruntled1 discontented wives1 whose husbands slave to give them luxuries for which they never get so much as--8,thank you40 ,we have all held up our hands in horror when some wife left a good1 devoted husband and eloped with another man or packed her trunk and hiked out for ,hollywood1 and we wondered what was the matter with these women that they were not satisfied with their husband's love4 ,the trouble with them was that they had married men who loved them instead of men they loved4 ,if they had been doing the love-making and trying to hold the affections of husbands whom they suspected every flapper of trying to steal from them1 they would have been too busy1 too thrilled and interested to get into mischief4 ,there are many reasons why a woman who is contemplating matrimony should lay greater stress upon the state of her own affections than she does upon the man's4 ,the principal one1 of course1 is because a woman is ten times as much married to her husband as he is to her1 and therefore it is ten times more important that she should be pleased with her bargain than it is that he should be satisfied with his4 ,a married man has a million interests1 and distractions1 and amusements1 and compensations outside of his home1 and if his wife does not turn out to be all that his fondest fancy painted her1 he has his business to fall back upon1 his ambition and his career to console him4 ,he is never wholly dependent on his wife for his happiness4 ,but a woman stakes her all on her matrimonial gamble1 and if she does not love her husband1 if she does not find happiness in her home1 she has nothing4 ,a woman's emotions make her life4 ,what she feels is of more interest to her than what she does4 ,she cannot substitute liking for loving any more than she can water for wine4 ,and no matter how much she admires the man to whom she is married1 no matter how grateful she is to him for his kindness to her1 unless he can raise a thrill in her breast everything is cinders1 ashes and dust to her4 ,she feels that she has missed the best thing in life1 the thing she most wanted2 and she is restless and dissatisfied1 and is forever on a still hunt to find her real soul-mate4 ,to the average woman1 marriage is a state of perpetual sacrifice4 ,she must go through the agony of bearing children1 and the long1 weary years of ceaseless care and anxiety in rearing them4 ,she must work harder than any hireling at the dull and monotonous task of cooking and cleaning and scrubbing and sewing and mending that it takes to make a comfortable home4 ,and the only thing on earth that can make all of this worth while is love for her husband4 ,that sets a star in her sky4 ,that gilds the humblest task4 ,the woman who stands over a stove cooking a dinner for the husband to whom she is utterly indifferent is a slave driven to her appointed task by her sense of duty4 ,the woman who stands over a stove cooking dinner for a husband she adores is a priestess making a burnt offering of herself on the altar of her god4 ,the woman who marries the man she loves is never bored1 and boredom is the particular curse of the feminine sex4 ,she throws herself heart and soul into her husband's interests1 and is more eager for his success than he is himself4 ,she is never dull1 because the smallest thing that concerns him is of more import to her than the events that shake the great outer world4 ,she can find food for thought and scope for her activities in the fact that her husband likes onions with his beefsteak or prefers mushrooms4 ,her days are filled with pleasurable excitement in preparing for his homecoming of an evening1 and when she hears his key in the latch her heart strikes up 8,hail to the ,king40 ,the woman who marries the man she loves is never dissatisfied1 never disgruntled4 ,he may be a poor thing1 but he is her own1 the one she cut out of the bunch and which she marked with her own brand4 ,having got the one thing she wanted most1 she can well afford to pity her poor sisters who have only limousines and pearls and the merely tolerated husbands who are the purveyors thereof4 ,a woman should always marry a man with whom she is very much in love1 because it insures her a stimulating and interesting life4 ,the reason that most women run down and get slack and slouchy is because they are bored to tears with domesticity4 ,they do not care for their husbands and so they take no trouble to please them4 ,but the woman who is in love with her husband1 who married the man she wanted1 is on her tiptoes all of the time4 ,she means to keep him and she takes no chances on disillusioning him with curl papers1 and cold cream1 and bad cooking1 and tantrums4 ,she is eternally in pursuit2 and while there may be times when she gets tired and feels as if she would like to sit down and take things easy1 still there is no denying that the love chase puts pep in any lady's day4 ,a woman should never marry any man except the one with whom she is very much in love1 because every woman craves romance1 and if she doesn't get it at home she is very apt to seek it abroad1 or else she goes through life hungry1 unsatisfied4 ,the wives who get into scandals2 who think they find soul-mates in their preachers1 or their doctors1 or long-haired poets2 the wives who run off after strange cults and who burden down the mails with letters to movie actors are all women who married men they didn't love4 ,the women who are crazily in love with their husbands make their own angel's food at home and don't have to go around trying to pick up stray crumbs on the street4 ,of course1 the woman who loves her husband better than he does her has her moments of acute jealousy1 but even these are full of ginger and are better than the dull stagnation of having a man that you don't take the trouble to lock up at night because you know you can't lose him4 ,truly1 it is more blessed to give than to receive1 and it is better for a woman to love than to be loved4 ,,xv ,,are ,,you ,,good ,,company ,,for ,,yourself8 ,do you ever think what poor company most of us are for ourselves8 ,it is strange but true that the one individual on ,god's earth who bores the average man and woman more than any one else is just himself and herself4 ,there is no society they so dread as their own1 and no expedient so desperate that they will not resort to it rather than be left alone with themselves4 ,they will fasten themselves like leeches on kinspeople and friends who try to shake them loose4 ,they will stay on in homes where they know they are not welcome4 ,they will put up with any discomfort in order to herd together4 ,they will hold up the telephone poles at the corners of streets1 and walk the aisles of the department stores until they are ready to drop with fatigue4 ,they will belong to clubs where they foregather with the dull and prosy and fat-witted1 and where they spend hours listening to egotists monologue about how great and wonderful they are4 ,evening after evening they go to vaudeville performances whose every turn is so stupid it is enough to make even a hero scream with pain1 and to see moving pictures whose scenarios are an insult to the intelligence of an idiot4 ,anything--anywhere1 to get away from themselves1 to escape having to spend an hour in their own company4 ,so universal is the belief that it is the limit of social and mental poverty to be reduced to your own society for company1 that we speak of those who live alone as being lonesome1 and pity them accordingly4 ,it does not even occur to us that they may have that within themselves which could make them gay and witty companions to themselves1 of whom they would never tire4 ,it is easy1 of course1 to see why many people are bored to tears with their own company4 ,men and women who never read anything can't have very much that is new and interesting to say to themselves4 ,after they have discussed the state of the green grocery trade with themselves1 on which they are rather fed up anyway after having wrestled with it all day1 or mulled over the last gossip about the neighbors next door1 and wondered for the millionth time how the ,joneses can afford a new car1 and where the ,smith girl has been spending the evening when she came home at #c ,a4 ,m41 they find that they have exhausted their conversational repertoire4 ,but if they are reading people they can never have a dull instant when they are alone1 for every book1 every magazine1 every newspaper is a magic carpet that takes them in an instant into the uttermost parts of the world4 ,there isn't a strange sight they may not see1 or a secret whispered behind a closed door they may not hear2 nor a romance unfolded whose thrill does not touch their hearts and stir their pulse4 ,education and cultivation would be worth while if they did nothing else except take the curse off loneliness4 ,you can see how people who are envious and jealous and quarrelsome and mean-spirited dread to be left alone with themselves4 ,they have devils from hell for company1 those men and women whose souls are filled with bitterness and hate1 and who are forever thrashing over old grievances1 recalling old wrongs1 bringing to life again old enmities4 ,we all avoid the pessimistic and the cynical--those who can see nothing cheerful or good in the world1 and with whom even a chance meeting seems to take the warmth out of the sunshine1 and ,god out of ,his heaven1 and make all life dark and foul4 ,how terrible1 then1 must it be to live with yourself when you have nothing to say to yourself that does not leave a dark-brown taste in your mouth8 ,it is not strange that those who have lived hard and selfish and grasping lives are poor company for themselves4 ,you cannot imagine a widow spending a cheery evening recalling how she nagged her poor1 dead husband1 how cross and peevish and complaining she was1 or how little she had done to repay him for all that he had done for her4 ,neither can you imagine a woman enjoying telling herself that if she had been less extravagant1 and content with simple things1 if she hadn't demanded fine clothes and jewels and trips to ,europe1 that her husband would not have had to kill himself working1 and that she might now have some one to talk to1 living and breathing1 instead of a demon of remorse4 ,it is not strange that a man wants other company than the recollection of how his coldness and neglect turned the bright1 joyous1 loving1 tender girl he married into a quiet1 sad woman who cringed like a whipped dog before his cruel fault-finding4 ,nor is it strange that the man who has driven hard bargains and overreached in trade1 who has ground down the faces of those who worked for him1 who has taken advantage of the ignorant and the trustful1 and built his fortune on the ruins of widows and children1 does not find his own society exhilarating4 ,when we are old we have nothing but our memories left us4 ,they are enough company if they are filled with the smiling faces of those we loved1 who recall to us kindly acts we have done1 helping hands we have held out1 and if they murmur to us of kindly1 gracious deeds4 ,but they are terrible companions if they are filled with memories of cruelty and wrong4 ,considering that1 do what we may1 we can never escape from ourselves1 that we are bound to endure our own society1 is it not a pity that we do not emulate the poet who said1 8,my mind to me a kingdom is10 and make ourselves better company for ourselves6 ,,xvi ,,keeping ,,young ,none of us wants to die4 ,no matter how strong our religious faith1 nor how lustily we sing 8,heaven is my home10 none of us is in a hurry to go there4 ,we prefer to stay in a world in which we are acquainted and acclimated4 ,likewise1 we all dread old age4 ,it fills us with horror to think of becoming bent and tottering old men and women1 our vigor of mind and body gone1 sans hair1 sans teeth1 sans everything4 ,so from time immemorial humanity has been on the still hunt for some magic that will stay the devastating hand of time and enable it to hold on to the youth it prizes so dearly4 ,the ancients sailed the world over seeking fabled islands and miraculous fountains of perpetual youth4 ,we moderns pin our faith to the surgeon's knife and the druggist's bottles1 to monkey glands1 and face liftings1 and paints1 and powders1 and hair dyes4 ,all in vain4 ,the black oxen of the years march over us1 treading out our youth and beauty1 our strength and high spirits1 and nothing that we can do will stop them4 ,so it seems a pity that we should waste so much thought1 so much struggle1 and effort1 and energy1 and money in essaying an impossible task4 ,for do what we may1 we cannot keep young1 and when we try to camouflage age as juvenility the only people in the world that we fool are ourselves4 ,we can dye our hair the gold1 or the black1 or the jet of girlhood1 but we cannot put under it the fresh face of sixteen4 ,we can have our skin gored and tucked until all of our wrinkles are taken out1 but there still remain the tired1 old eyes that have seen fifty or sixty years4 ,we can starve ourselves until we get the figures of flappers1 but we are not lithe and graceful4 ,we are living skeletons4 ,we can roll our stockings and borrow our granddaughter's clothes1 but it doesn't make us look like debutantes4 ,it makes us look like those afflicted with senile dementia4 ,the truth is1 the more we fight age the harder it fights back and the sooner it conquers us4 ,none grow old so quickly as those who work themselves into premature age trying to keep young4 ,once ,i was standing behind a jaunty little figure perched on the runningboard of a car4 ,she wore the gayest and sportiest of sport suits4 ,she had the thin figure of a girl of fifteen4 ,her bobbed henna-colored hair curled under the brim of a rakish little hat4 ,presently she turned around and disclosed a face that was like a mask1 it was so plastered over with cosmetics4 8,heavens6 ,did you ever see such an old hag80 exclaimed a man near me4 ,now1 this woman was not more than fifty years old4 ,she was in the prime of life1 at an age when many women are handsomer than they ever were in their lives4 ,no one would have thought of her as being old at all1 if she had been willing to appear her own honest age2 if she had had the pleasing plumpness that belonged to her time of life2 if her soft1 gray hair had waved about her face1 and if she had been appropriately dressed4 ,it was her effort to appear kiddish that called attention to what an old goat she was4 ,if bobbing and dyeing their hair1 and dieting themselves to emaciation1 and wearing knee-length skirts made elderly women look young and girlish1 they would not only be justified in doing so1 it would be a virtue to do it1 for thereby they would make themselves easy on the eyes4 ,but just the reverse is true4 ,their affectation of youth only calls attention to what a long distance they have traveled from youth4 ,old mutton never seems so old1 and tough1 and stringy as when it is dressed as spring lamb4 ,and the folly of trying to act young after you are old is just as great as that of trying to look sixteen when you are sixty4 ,women have been told so often they must keep their spirits young1 they must never think old thoughts1 they must never speak of age1 or admit to themselves they are getting older1 that they have come to believe that1 simply by forgetting their birthdays1 they can maintain perpetual girlhood4 ,we all know women who begin every reminiscence by saying that they were very young at the time it happened1 and who give us to understand their husbands were cradle snatchers1 who married them when they were mere infants4 ,we know old women who are always teasing themselves about men1 and talking about their best beaus1 and pretending to have flirtations with boys young enough to be their grandsons1 and repeating compliments about their eyes or their fascinations they allege men paid them1 but that even an idiot would know that they made up themselves4 ,how ridiculous the poor souls make themselves6 ,how infinitely older they appear than the women who do not try to pose as vamps after they have ceased to look the part1 and who regard men just as they do women1 as interesting and agreeable human beings4 ,perhaps1 after all1 we make too big a bugaboo of growing old4 ,the twilight has its charms no less than the dawn or high noon1 and so the last lap of the journey of life has its compensations and its joys if we are willing to accept them4 ,anyway1 the only way we can escape old age is by dying young4 ,but if we welcome it as a friend1 it deals kindlier with us than if we fight it as an enemy4 ,,xvii ,,gossip1 ,,the ,,policeman ,a young woman writes me that she considers that she has a right to live her own life in her own way and do exactly as she pleases4 ,so she has broken most of the ,ten ,commandments and snapped her fingers in the face of ,mrs4 ,grundy4 ,and now that she finds that her reputation is being torn to tatters1 she thinks that she is being most unfairly treated4 8,oh1 how ,i hate the whole tribe of kitty-cats60 she wails4 8,oh1 how hard1 and cruel1 and unjust people are60 ,then she asks1 8,don't you think that gossip is the unpardonable sin80 ,not at all4 ,gossip is one of the most powerful influences in the world for good4 ,it is the invisible1 omnipresent policeman that enforces law and order4 ,it is the scourge that keeps the trembling wretch in order and makes the weak-kneed and the wobbly walk the straight and narrow path4 ,we can stifle the voice of conscience1 but we can't silence the voice of our neighbors4 ,we can dope ourselves into believing that we have a right to make our own code of conduct1 but we can't force the community in which we live to take our point of view on the matter1 or to make any exceptions in our behalf to the standards that society has set up for good behavior4 ,and it is this fear of what 8they'll say0 that makes us curb our appetites and passions and keep up at least an outward show of decency4 ,for no matter how vain and egotistic we are2 no matter how self-complacent and self-satisfied we are2 no matter how independent we think we are1 we are all cowards who grovel in the dust before public opinion4 ,it is the lifted eyebrow4 ,it is the cold1 measured1 appraising look that weighs us in the balance and finds us wanting4 ,it is the turn of a shoulder away from us and the little hush that falls on a group as we approach that tells us that we have been the subject of unfavorable discussion1 which we dread more than we do the wrath of ,god4 ,it is the knowledge that she will be gossiped about if she indulges in any flirtations which keeps many a bored young married woman with romantic yearnings from indulging in little affairs with good-looking bachelors4 ,she knows there might really be no harm in her having lunch with ,mr4 ,a4 or going to the theater with ,captain ,c41 but that she could never explain it to the woman who lives across the street4 ,and the next time the ,current ,events ,club meets she knows that she will be the current event of burning interest discussed4 ,therefore she turns down the alluring invitations and stays at home1 and minds her p's and her q's and her babies4 ,and it is the fear of gossip that makes many an indiscreet girl watch her step and saves her from the stumble that would land her in the pit4 ,she is easy-going and good-natured1 and warm-hearted and affectionate1 and she sees no harm in letting boys that she likes kiss her and fondle her1 but it makes the flesh creep on her bones to think of the ,amalgamated ,scandal ,mongers' ,union getting out their hammers and going for her if she does4 ,she knows well enough that the neighbors on either side keep tab on what hour her beaux go home and what goes on as they sit on the front porch or stoop of an evening1 and she conducts herself accordingly4 ,there is no chaperon so efficient as ,mrs4 ,grundy4 ,if we could only do as we pleased and get away with it without any censorious comments from our fellow creatures1 there would be many more philandering husbands and wives than there are1 many more girls wandering down the primrose path1 many more neglected children and ill-kept houses1 many more wife-beating husbands and virago wives4 ,it is the knowledge that1 if they give way to their natural impulses1 they will be talked about1 which gives many would-be sinners the strength to resist the temptation to be as bad as they would like to be4 ,the people who think it is so wicked to be talked about are only those who have something to hide1 something that reflects on their character4 ,it is our bad deeds we don't want discussed4 ,we are tickled to death to have our good ones broadcasted to the ends of the earth4 ,no man objects to having it told about that he is a model husband1 a good provider and a tender father4 ,the thing he wants hushed up is that he half starves his family in order to spend the money on a flapper4 ,no woman wants to put the soft pedal on the conversation when her friends are telling what a wonderful wife and mother she is2 but she doesn't know how women1 who call themselves her friends1 can be catty enough to whisper behind their hands that she went out joy-riding with young ,snookums and didn't get home until #d in the morning1 while the baby was nearly dying with the croup4 ,those who are down on gossip and feel that the world should cover up their shortcomings with a blanket of silence are unreasonable4 ,why should other people be more careful of your reputation than you are yourself8 ,if you do not care enough for your good name to protect it1 why demand that service of the general public8 ,foolish and vain expectation6 ,for the gossipers keep on their good work1 and the only way you can escape being talked about is to be so exemplary that you are a dull subject for conversation4 ,,xviii ,,the ,,lucky ,,working ,,woman ,why do we hold to the theory that work is a blessing to men1 but a curse to women8 ,we know beyond all questioning that the necessity of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow was the consolation prize that ,adam was handed along with his eviction papers when he was turned out of ,eden4 ,we know that the only happy man is the busy man4 ,we know that only in constructive labor does a man find an interest that never palls and a game in which there is a perpetual thrill4 ,we know that work is the greatest anodyne for sorrow and the best protection against temptation4 ,we know that1 as ,stevenson says1 8if a man loves the labor of any trade apart from any question of success or fame1 the gods have called him1 and he is of all men most enviable40 ,so manifold are the benefits men derive from work1 so salutary are its effects upon them1 that we have a contempt for the idle1 purposeless man and feel that1 no matter how much money he has1 he has no right to spend his life in loafing4 ,we are eager to get our boys to work1 so that their restless young energy may find a legitimate outlet1 instead of being employed in devising new forms of dissipation4 ,the young man must have something to do1 and if he isn't bending his back in honest farming he will be breaking his neck in sowing a wild-oats crop4 ,our attitude1 however1 toward women and work is diametrically opposite4 ,we do not regard work as a good thing for women4 ,on the contrary1 we consider it a misfortune for a woman to have to work4 ,we have even coined a phrase for it and speak of the woman who must earn her own living as a 8poor working woman40 ,worse still1 the woman who works pities herself4 ,the mother whose daughters go down to business every morning bewails their fate and feels that destiny has dealt most unkindly by them4 ,the woman who must do her own housework1 and look after her own babies1 and make her own clothes sheds barrels of tears over her lot4 ,men also accept this view of the situation that labor is a curse to women1 and work themselves to death in order that their wives and daughters may live in parasitic ease1 with servants to wait upon them and have nothing to do but kill time4 ,in fact1 the consensus of opinion seems to be that the ideal state for a woman is that in which she never performs any useful labor1 but merely sits on a silk cushion and feeds upon strawberries1 sugar and cream4 ,all of this is a distorted view of the situation4 ,women need to work just as much as men do4 ,idleness has just as disastrous an effect upon the feminine character as it has upon the male1 and among women1 as among men1 the only happy1 contented ones are those who are so much engrossed in some useful labor that they haven't leisure in which to consider whether they are satisfied or not4 ,mother 8poor ,marys0 and 8poor ,sallys0 her daughters who have to earn their living1 but nowhere else will you see healthier1 happier girls than those holding down good jobs in stores and offices4 ,nine times out of ten the girl behind the counter is brighter1 more alert1 and finds life a far more entertaining proposition than does her purposeless idle sister before the counter4 ,nor is the domestic woman who has to do her own housework entitled to shed any tears of self-pity on our necks4 ,there is no more reason why a husky young woman shouldn't do her share of the work of the domestic partnership than there is why her husband should not do his4 ,it is no more of a hardship for her to have to work than it is for him1 and many a rich old woman who sits now with empty hands that ache for occupation will tell you that her happiest days were the busy1 crowded ones when she got up at five o'clock to cook her husband's breakfast before he went to the factory and sat up until eleven o'clock washing and patching his clothes so that he could make a decent appearance next day4 ,it is a significant fact that the women who fill sanitariums and enrich nerve specialists are not the overworked1 hard-driven wives and mothers4 ,they are the middle-aged and elderly women1 who have nothing to do but to canvass their systems for symptoms of every disease they read about in the magazines4 ,it takes leisure to develop invalidism4 ,busy people keep well because they haven't time to be sick4 ,nearly every man's ambition is to keep his wife in idleness1 and he thinks that he is being a good husband when he can boast that she hasn't a thing on earth to do but to amuse herself4 ,it is pathetic that the thing that so many good husbands strive for is their undoing4 ,for it is the idle women who are the peevish1 fretful1 discontented wives4 ,it is the idle women who run off with all sorts of fool fads and fancies4 ,it is the idle women who decide that their good1 honest1 hard-working husbands are not their real soul-mates1 and who get into scandals with jazzhounds and elope with romantic-looking sheiks they have picked up in hotel lobbies4 ,the idle woman is never a happy woman4 ,having nothing to do but to think about herself1 she is sure to prod around in her mind until she finds a grievance4 ,having nothing to do1 she is sure to get into mischief4 ,having no interesting occupation1 she begins to hunt for thrills4 ,and the net result is that she works harder trying to amuse herself than she would at scrubbing floors1 and the only reward is that life is flat1 stale and unpalatable in her mouth4 ,let us hope that the time will soon come when we will have enough intelligence to perceive that work is a woman's salvation even as it is a man's1 and when we will congratulate the woman with a job instead of pitying her4 ,,xix ,,an ,,indoor ,,sport ,this is a sad world1 mates1 with too little sunshine in it1 so far be it from me to abridge1 abate or curtail any innocent pleasure4 ,but it does seem to me that there are certain diversions that should be indulged in only in the privacy of home4 ,one of these is the family spat4 ,apparently a large number of men and women get married for the sole purpose of providing themselves with a sparring partner1 with whom they can put on the gloves at a moment's notice with1 or without1 the slightest provocation4 ,life has no dull moments for them1 because they are always saying something that draws blood1 or framing a retort that will cut to the quick1 and the excitement of a battle to the death is perpetually thrilling their nerves4 ,without doubt1 it is a merry and adventurous existence for the doughty domestic warriors who enjoy that kind of thing6 ,i would not be cruel enough to deny them the cheery pastime of going to the mat over every trivial difference of opinion4 ,but ,i do contend that conjugal quarrels are an indoor sport that should be pursued only when the participants have sought the seclusion that the cabin grants1 as they used to say in 8,pinafore10 and when all the shades have been pulled down and the keyholes stuffed with cotton4 ,possibly the lack of an audience might take off a little of the edge of the bout for the battling husband and spouse2 but1 oh1 how immeasurably it would add to the comfort and happiness of those of us who are the innocent bystanders and who are forced to look on1 sick with horror1 at these encounters6 ,in all good truth ,i know of no other situation so miserable and so embarrassing as to be called upon to referee a fight between a married couple4 ,their quarrel is1 to begin with1 a matter with which we have no concern2 one in which we do not desire to meddle2 one in which we ardently wish to take neither side4 ,it makes us feel as if we were cowards to keep silent while a man hurls deadly insults at his wife1 and we writhe in vicarious shame while a woman vituperates her husband4 ,we have the sense of having assisted in an indecent orgy when a husband and wife strip every rag of reserve away from their relationship and fling open the doors of their skeleton closets1 and rattle their bones in public4 ,nor are we consoled by the knowledge that the people who make public exhibitions of their tempers must enjoy doing so or else they would not do it4 ,yet we all number among our friends1 husbands and wives1 otherwise estimable and charming individuals1 who always stage their fights in the most conspicuous place they can find1 and who seem to prefer an audience to privacy4 ,when you meet them for an evening's diversion they are having a preliminary set-to4 ,perhaps the husband has come home late from the office1 or has forgotten to mail a letter1 or possibly the wife has kept her husband waiting while she did her hair over the second time4 ,during the selection of the dinner they get warmed up to the work and put in some punches with real steam behind them4 ,they clinch1 and bite1 and gouge over the selection of a play1 and they reach for each other's vital spots and get in dirty jabs at the supper dance that follows the play4 ,doubtless the fighters are enjoying themselves1 but a pleasant time is not being had by all4 ,the abashed onlookers know not what to do4 ,they do not know whether to rush in and make it a free-for-all fight or to try to mediate between the warring couple1 or whether to pretend to have been suddenly stricken deaf1 dumb and blind4 ,and they wind up by feeling outraged that they should have been placed in such a mortifying position1 and wishing heartily that husbands and wives would keep their quarrels for home consumption1 and not inflict them on their friends4 ,the same strictures apply to the woman who henpecks her husband4 ,that also is one of the quiet home joys that should be strictly confined to the domestic circle4 ,i raise no voice of protest against the woman who has wit and strength and determination enough to oust her husband out of his position as head of the house and assume it herself4 ,it is a matter between the husband and wife1 and if he hasn't enough spunk to fight for his rights he deserves to lose them4 ,but why cannot the bossy women be content with exercising their tyranny quietly and unobtrusively8 ,why do they insist upon rattling the chains by which they lead their husbands until they call public attention to them8 ,think of the women you know who always say 8,,my house40 8,,my car40 8,,my children40 ,who always walk ahead of their husbands and point out a seat1 and say1 8,john1 sit there10 and who always tell ,john where to get on and where to get off6 ,and think how all the rest of us are embarrassed for poor ,john6 ,believe me1 dirty linen should be washed at home1 and family quarrels staged there4 ,that is one of the main things for which homes are designed4 ,,xx ,,should ,,women ,,tell8 ,i get a great many letters from women who write that there is a dark stain on their past life4 ,in the headstrong folly of youth they took a step down the primrose path1 then repented of their sin1 and turned their back upon it1 and laid hold upon righteousness4 ,sometimes nobody knows of the slip but the girl herself and the man who was her partner in wrong-doing4 ,sometimes a woman who had mired her skirts to the knees has washed them clean with her tears of remorse1 and had the courage to build anew her life in some place where her early escapades are unknown4 ,then love comes to these women4 ,good men offer them marriage and an honorable place in society4 ,and the question they ask is1 shall they tell these men the story of their life before they marry them1 or bury the secret in their heart1 and leave the matter on the knees of the gods8 ,this is a problem no human wisdom can solve1 for1 so far as the woman is concerned1 it is a case in which she will be damned if she does1 and damned if she doesn't4 ,her chances of getting happiness--or misery--through opening up her skeleton closet and exhibiting its contents to the man who has asked her to be his wife are about even1 with the odds for happiness slightly in favor of keeping the lid clamped down good and hard on her secret4 ,the question of right does not enter into the matter unless you institute a prematrimonial confessional in which men shall bare their souls as well as women4 ,there is no more real reason why a woman should tell a man every detail of her past than there is why he should tell her of every time that he has strayed off of the straight and narrow path4 ,it is true that a couple who knew the worst of each other would start out their life together on a firm foundation of honest understanding1 but nobody can claim that it would make for their felicity1 or increase their affection for each other4 ,on the contrary1 they would have swept away every illusion4 ,they would have destroyed the faith of each in the other1 and they would have called into being an evil spirit1 a ghost out of the past1 that they could not banish1 and that would forever stand between them4 ,men have had the wisdom to perceive this4 ,they realize that what a woman doesn't know doesn't hurt her1 but that the thing that she does know she worries herself to death over1 and so few men are foolish enough to furnish a wife with a working diagram of their past lives with which she can torture herself1 and them4 ,they draw a discreet veil over episodes that are best forgotten1 anyway1 and deal only in glittering generalities in referring to their gay bachelor days4 ,moreover1 women are sensible enough to let it go at that4 ,no woman wants her husband to tell her things that stab her every time she thinks of them1 and that eat like a canker into her memory4 ,it is only when the case is reversed1 and when it is the woman who has a blot upon her past1 that she wonders if it is the right thing1 the honorable thing1 to tell the man who wants to marry her about it4 ,of course1 the woman is bound in this by the double code of morals1 which makes one standard for the woman and another for the man1 and that1 humorously enough1 makes a husband feel that he has been exceedingly ill-used if he discovers that his wife has a past that matches his own4 ,therefore1 because she is afraid that in future years her husband may find out about her past life1 or else driven by her conscience1 or for the sheer relief of sharing her burden with another1 the woman nearly always tells everything to the man before marriage4 ,sometimes it drives him from her4 ,sometimes he loves her enough to marry her1 in spite of her revelations4 ,but1 while he forgives1 he never forgets4 ,always he is haunted by the memories of what she has revealed4 ,he never trusts her1 never wholly believes in her1 and he has to be a bigger-souled man than most men are if he does not reproach her with her past1 and use it as a whip of scorpions to scourge her with when he is angry with her4 ,of course1 when either a man's or a woman's past life has in it some sinister curse that reaches out and lays a hand on the future of the one he or she marries1 he or she is bound in honor to tell the other one about it4 ,but when there is nothing of this kind1 nothing but a youthful folly1 a mistake1 a blunder in the dark1 bitterly repented of and lived down1 it seems to me the part of wisdom for both men and women to forego post-mortems1 and to wash the slate clean and make a fresh start4 ,what they have done does not matter so much as what they are going to do4 ,and it often happens that just because a man or woman has stumbled in the past they walk the more carefully among the pitfalls of life1 and that out of the sorrows and repentance for their sins they have brought a tenderness1 a compassion1 a forbearance and an understanding that makes them better men and women than the vast majority of those who have lived blameless lives4 ,confession is always weakness4 ,the brave soul keeps its own secrets1 and takes its own punishment in silence4 ,it takes a strong man or woman to keep from blabbing1 but it pays never to tell anything that you do not wish the world to know4 ,,xxi ,,domestic ,,boredom ,the thing that oftenest makes marriage a failure is its dulness4 ,the real specter on the hearth is that awful silence4 ,it is because husbands and wives have nothing interesting to say to each other that they quarrel4 ,it is no joke1 it is a sad truth1 that in any theater or restaurant you can spot the married couples at a first glance4 ,they are the couples who are sitting up reading the program through from cover to cover between the acts1 or are apparently memorizing the menu while the waiter brings their order4 ,the alert1 interesting1 smiling people who are gayly chatting together are the unwed1 or those who are talking to other people's husbands and wives4 ,let even a bore drop into a droopy1 dejected family circle that has been yawning itself to death and everybody brightens up and the stream of conversation which had apparently dried up at its source begins to flow again4 ,two may be company and three a crowd before marriage1 but generally after marriage two is gobs of silence and three a godsend4 ,yet the majority of people marry for companionship4 ,before marriage they could never get enough of each other's society1 and they esteemed each other perfect spellbinders4 ,how is it1 then1 that they get so fed up on each other's company that they sit up like mutes in the solitude of their homes8 ,why is it that1 apart from fault-finding and spats and complaints about the servants and the tradesmen and bulletins about the children1 there is so little family conversation2 practically none that is interesting and cheerful and inspiring8 ,you would think that a husband and wife who have all interests in common could never talk themselves out4 ,but they do1 and they come to the place where they take refuge behind the evening paper or in solitaire to save themselves from the pretense of even having to maintain the appearance of keeping up social intercourse4 ,wives lay the blame for this state of affairs on their husbands4 ,they say1 heaven knows1 that they would be glad enough to talk1 but that you can't maintain a conversation with a person who always grunts by way of reply1 and who could give a clam on ice points on silence and then beat it at the game4 ,men retort that they have exhausted their conversational powers during business hours1 and they desire to rest their vocal cords at home4 ,nevertheless1 it is observable that if somebody interesting happens to call1 or they go out to dinner1 the very man who was silent at home finds plenty to say4 ,now there are several reasons why there is so little conversation in the home4 ,the first reason is because home talk is so often unpleasant4 ,women1 especially1 are prone to flavor it with gloom4 ,they like to recite the litany of the day's mischances4 ,they spoil the flavor of a dinner by telling how much it cost4 ,they bring on a scene with a child by telling of its naughtiness4 ,they thrash over their old grievances because they can't have what richer women have4 ,all of this gets on the husband's nerves1 and he retorts by saying a few pithy things about what a fool a man is to marry and burden himself with a family and what a poor manager his wife is1 and he gives a few knocks to the dinner for good measure4 ,after which conversation naturally languishes4 ,another reason that there is little conversation at home is because it is dangerous4 ,experience teaches us that we have to watch our tongues and delete our home talk if we want to save ourselves from endless trouble4 ,a man hates to lie to his wife about what he does4 ,he would enjoy telling her all about the poker game he stayed downtown for last night1 and the funny things the boys said and did1 but he does not do it because well he knows that the price of such an indiscreet revelation would be to have her nagging him about it forever and a day4 ,a wife would just love to tell her husband about her adventures in buying a new hat1 and how she fell for the twenty-five-dollar one instead of the fifteen-dollar one she meant to buy4 ,but she is well aware that she would never hear the last of her extravagance if she did4 ,so they both keep silent4 ,there is little home conversation because nobody is interested1 and nobody pretends to be1 in what you say4 ,in the family circle nobody listens4 ,nobody laughs at your jokes4 ,nobody sees the points of your merry cracks4 ,try to tell a good story1 and somebody is sure to remark that they have heard it before1 and that it is an ancient wheeze4 ,if you had discovered the ,north ,pole and were relating your hairbreadth adventures in reaching it by airplane1 somebody would interrupt at the most breathless moment to say that the iceman forgot to deliver the ice yesterday4 ,wives won't listen even when their husbands try to tell them about their hopes and plans and ambitions in their careers4 ,and when a woman tries to talk to her husband about the things that are of vital interest to her he falls asleep and snores in her face4 ,and that is why conversation is a lost art in the family circle4 ,,xxii ,,to ,,marry ,,or ,,not ,,to ,,marry8 ,a young woman once said to me3 8,i am1 as you know1 the private secretary of the head of a very big business concern4 ,i get a generous salary4 ,my hours are easy4 ,my employer1 who is an elderly man1 is one of the finest men in the world1 and treats me with every courtesy1 kindness and consideration4 ,i feel it a privilege to be in daily contact with such a brilliant mind as he has4 ,i love my work4 ,i have what they call in men a business head4 ,to me there is no other romance so fascinating as the romance of commerce2 no game so absorbing as the business game4 ,and it thrills me to the finger tips to know that ,i have a part1 even if it is a small one1 in this great adventure that sends men and ships to the uttermost parts of the earth and that gambles for fortunes4 8,it gratifies my vanity to know that ,i have worked up from the bottom to my present fine position1 and it pleases my ambition to know that ,i can climb still higher1 and that every year ,i will be more efficient and more valuable to my employer4 ,i enjoy the money ,i make1 and the luxuries it brings me1 as only a woman can who comes of a poor family1 and whose girlhood has been barren of all the pretty things that girls crave4 ,i find a lot of solid satisfaction in watching my bank account grow1 knowing that1 if ,i keep on with my job for a few years1 ,i will have put by enough to safeguard my old age4 8,so far1 so good4 ,if ,i were going to remain perpetually on the sunny side of forty1 ,i would ask no life better than that of the successful business woman4 ,but the dread hour will strike for me1 as it does for all other women1 and ,i am wondering if1 when it does1 ,i will not find myself a lonely old woman1 and wish that ,i had married and had children4 8,i am thirty now1 and ,i have got to decide the question in the next year or two4 ,shall ,i give up my mahogany desk for a gas range8 ,shall ,i forfeit my fat pay envelope for a job where ,i shall have to toil ten times as hard for only my board and clothes8 ,shall ,i give up the occupation for which ,i spent years in preparing myself1 for which ,i have talent and which is a joy for me to perform1 for domestic service which ,i loathe1 for which ,i have no aptitude and in which ,i am utterly unskilled8 8,when ,i see my sister shabby1 bedraggled1 overworked1 with her crying babies and grouchy husband ,i feel like clinging to my good1 soft1 easy office position with both hands4 ,then rises that specter of the future in my pathway1 and ,i wonder if in staying single ,i will miss the best that life has to give to a woman1 and if ,i will regret it if ,i refuse to follow the traditional career of my sex4 8,of course1 ,i know that there are women who try to have their cake1 and eat it1 too2 who grab matrimony with one hand1 and hold on to their jobs with the other1 but my observation is that they always fall between the stools4 ,they are failures both as business women and as wives and mothers1 for to succeed in anything you have to give everything that is in you to it4 8,no woman is of much use in an office when nine-tenths of her brain and all of her interest are back home in a cradle and she is worrying over whether a hired nurse is giving the baby its milk4 ,nor can any woman who comes back home at night1 with a worn-out body and jangled nerves1 be anybody's ideal of a wife and mother4 8,so as far as ,i am concerned ,i have to decide the question which ,i am going to be1 a business woman or a domestic woman1 before ,i take the fatal step1 and for the life of me ,i can't make up my mind which to do4 ,to marry or not to marry1 that is the problem that ,i am acquiring gray hairs and wrinkles debating4 8,of course1 if a fairy prince should come along and say1 #8,come and be my queen1 and ride beside me in my limousine and tour the world with me on my yacht1' ,i should doff my ,cinderella working suit and put on my glass slippers1 and step out with him4 8,but it is only in novels that millionaires espouse poor working girls4 ,the men who come a-courting me are just ordinary young chaps on small salaries1 whose wives will have to do their own cooking1 and wear hand-me-downs4 8,nor would there be any difficulty in settling the question if ,i had an overwhelming passion for some man4 ,then ,i would cry1 #8,all for love and my job well lost6' and a two-by-four flat would look better to me than to be president of the greatest corporation in the world4 ,but ,i am not really in love4 ,i have merely an affection for a certain chap that ,i might possibly cultivate into a warmer emotion if ,i decided that it was better1 after all1 to marry4 8,but it is cruel1 isn't it1 that a woman has to choose between marriage and her career8 ,when a man marries he merely annexes a home and wife and children to the pleasures and interests of his work1 but a woman has to sacrifice one or the other4 ,and ,i don't know which one to choose40 8,and whichever way you decide1 you will be apt to regret it10 ,i replied consolingly4 ,,xxiii ,,woman',s ,,greatest ,,gift ,a man told me the other day that he had not married until he was forty-five years old because he was determined not to marry any woman who did not have a sense of humor1 and it took him that long to find one4 ,a wise man6 ,a very ,solomon among men6 ,may his tribe increase6 ,it is a million times more important for a woman to have a well-developed funny bone than it is for her to have a ,grecian profile1 yet when men go to marry they pick out a girl for a wife because she has melting black eyes1 or soulful blue eyes1 without ever once observing whether the said eyes look on the funny side of life or take a dark1 pessimistic1 bilious view of it4 ,which is one of the reasons that domestic life is no merry jest to the average husband4 ,a sense of humor is desirable in a man1 but it is absolutely essential for a woman to have a sense of humor if she is to be an agreeable life partner1 because a woman's existence is made up of little1 nagging things1 at which she must either laugh or cry1 and if she can't laugh them off1 they get on her nerves1 and she goes to pieces4 ,it is the neurotic1 haggard women1 who can't see a joke even after it is diagrammed for them1 who fill the insane asylums and the sanitariums and divorce courts4 ,the women who wear the smile that won't come off1 and whose laughter is set on a hair trigger1 get to be fair1 fat and forty1 and you couldn't pry their husbands away from them with a crowbar4 ,it is the lack of a sense of humor that causes women to make tragedies instead of comedies out of trifles4 ,take the servant trouble1 for instance4 ,women worry themselves sick over the mistakes of a green maid1 and it never occurs to them that the very blunders that they are shedding tears over are screamingly funny contretemps that they pay out money to see imitated in a sketch on the vaudeville stage4 ,of course1 no one wants the soup to be seasoned with sugar instead of salt1 nor the waste-paper basket to be put on the mantel as a parlor ornament as a perpetual thing1 but the mistress who can get a laugh instead of a sick headache out of the mistakes of her ,norah or ,dinah1 fresh from ,ireland or the cotton fields1 saves her own face and that of the maid whom she later trains into being a good servant4 ,moreover1 a woman with a sense of humor can take the curse off of even bad cooking1 for there is not one of us who would not rather sit down to a boiled dinner with a jolly woman1 full of good stories and anecdotes1 than to attend a banquet where the hostess is gloomy and peevish and whiny1 and who frets with her children and spats with her husband4 ,whether a woman makes a success or failure of matrimony depends altogether on whether she has a sense of humor or not4 ,if she can see her husband as one of the most mirth-provoking1 side-splitting1 uproarious human jokes that nature ever perpetrated she will be happy1 and he will bless heaven on his knees for having given him the paragon of wives4 ,but if she sees him as an ,awful ,problem1 or a subject for reformation1 neither one of them will ever know a happy hour1 and the marriage will either end in a divorce court or a long endurance contest4 ,the women who wreck marriages are the ones who take their husbands seriously1 and who get tragic every time their husbands look at another woman1 or play a little poker1 or fail to come home at the appointed hour1 and who weep when their husbands forget an anniversary1 or fail in some little attention they consider their due4 ,the women who keep their husbands enslaved from the altar to the grave are the women who laugh with their husband over their little faults and peculiarities4 ,they make a joke of their husband's weakness for a pretty face2 they have a dozen funny stories to tell about how they helped their husbands out of scrapes1 and1 instead of feeling ill-used and assuming the pose of a domestic martyr when their husbands forget their birthdays1 they go out and buy themselves a particularly nice present1 which they pay for without a murmur because they know that a wife with a sense of humor is worth anything she costs4 ,a sense of humor is even more necessary to a mother than it is to a wife4 ,the humorless woman takes her children too tragically4 ,they wear her out1 and she alienates them from her by her ceaseless nagging because she thinks that every little foolish thing they do is full of direful significance4 ,the mother with a sense of humor knows that youth is as subject to certain follies as it is to the mumps and the measles and the whooping cough1 and that it must go through these experiences1 as it did through the cycle of infantile diseases1 but that they are not fatal if they are carefully watched4 ,she may not approve of all the manifestations of flapperism and jellybeanitis1 but she knows that the remedy for them is laughter and not tears1 and so she keeps her young ones in bounds with good-natured ridicule4 ,nor does she break her heart with dismal forebodings about the terrible fate that is bound to overtake boys and girls who do not dress and act as did their grandparents4 ,she has seen too many silly young people develop into fine men and women to borrow trouble worrying over what is going to become of the race4 ,in its last analysis1 a sense of humor is just the sense of proportion that enables us to see things in their true relation to life4 ,it is the thing that keeps us from making mountains out of molehills1 and that gives us the courage to smile instead of cry4 ,happy the woman who has this gift1 and thrice happy the man who gets her for a wife4 ,,xxiv ,,grafting ,,on ,,the ,,old ,,folks ,it is a curious thing1 in a way it is a beautiful thing1 and it's a selfish thing1 that children rarely ever think of their parents as human beings4 ,children think of their fathers and mothers as the source whence all blessings flow or they think of them as an avenging justice4 ,but it seldom occurs to them that their parents are men and women1 in addition to being parents2 that they have the same preferences and long for the same pleasures as other people1 and that they have a few rights that even their children should respect4 ,of course1 a small child unquestionably takes for granted all that its parents give and do for it4 ,it is merely the order of nature that ,mother should appear at its bed with the cup of water for which it cries out in the night2 that ,mother should clean up the dirt it brings into the house and spend hours over the stove cooking the things it likes to eat2 and that ,father should work while it plays and go shabby to give it fine clothes4 ,as they grow up1 children continue to demand more and more of their parents4 ,they bleed ,father and ,mother white for the things they want4 ,they are not intentionally cruel1 but they will take the last dollar they can wring out of the family purse without ever once thinking that ,father and ,mother might like to spend some of the money they earn on themselves and in gratifying their own desires4 ,and1 curiously enough1 even after they have grown to man's and woman's estate1 the great majority of people still hold to this point of view about their parents4 ,in regulating their lives1 they do not take their parents' rights into consideration4 ,they do not say1 8,my father and mother have sacrificed enough for me2 they have done enough for me4 ,now ,i will stand on my own feet1 and be as little a burden as possible to them40 ,of course1 the most flagrant illustration of this is found in the loafer sons and daughters who let their old parents work and support them4 ,we all know husky1 able-bodied young men who play golf while ,father slaves in an office1 and strapping big girls who perform on the piano while ,mother is performing on the gas range4 ,apparently1 it never crosses the mind of these despicable young people that after they are old enough to support themselves they have no right to sponge upon their parents1 and graft their living off them4 ,still less do they ever think that ,mother and ,father would like to take things easier as they grow older1 and indulge in a few of the luxuries they have had to deny themselves while they were raising and educating their children4 ,another illustration of how little children regard the rights of their parents you may see in the nonchalance with which young mothers turn over their children to their own mothers4 ,when ,sally wants to go to a bridge luncheon or ,maud wants to take a trip1 they dump the children down on ,mother4 ,when ,clarabell wants to go to ,europe for the summer1 she doesn't worry at all as to what to do with the children4 ,she leaves them1 with a thousand instructions as to diet and clothes1 and manners and morals1 with ,mother4 ,so that in innumerable families ,mother becomes nothing but a sort of universal nursemaid4 ,it would shock these daughters to be told what a mean1 selfish thing they do in not standing by and doing their own baby tending as ,mother did hers4 ,they1 themselves1 know what it is to walk the colic--what broken nights mean1 how incessant must be the care given little children--how nerve-racking children's noise is4 ,yet they foist this burden on ,mother without a pang of compunction because they are so used to seeing her doing everything for them4 ,it never occurs to them that she would like to fold her hands in a little peace and rest2 furthermore1 that she has earned it by bringing up one family1 and her daughters haven't any right to make her substitute on raising another one4 ,then there are the children who lay their matrimonial burdens on their parents4 ,john gets married before he is earning enough to support a family4 ,susie marries a ne'er-do-well1 in spite of all efforts to prevent it4 ,fanny discovers that the man to whom she is married is not her soul mate1 and gets a divorce1 and comes back home with two or three children4 ,none of these selfish young people1 bent on gratifying their own desires1 considers ,father's and ,mother's rights in the matter1 yet the parents1 in the end1 are the real sacrifices4 ,they can't let ,john and his wife and children starve1 and so the money that ,father and ,mother had saved up for their old age goes in pittances to help him along4 ,they can't shut the door in ,fanny's face when she comes back with her divorce and her half-orphaned children1 so ,father works harder1 and ,mother pinches and economizes more to raise and educate this second family that their children have thrown upon them4 ,surely there is no other thing that children need to realize so much as that their parents have some rights4 ,perhaps if they understood this1 and that after a man and a woman have raised a family of children they have a right to peace and quiet and their own money1 there would be fewer parasitic sons and daughters4 ,perhaps1 if they realized that parents had rights1 more young people would consider how their marriages would react on their parents1 and many a disgruntled wife would carry on with a marriage that wasn't perfectly congenial rather than burden her old parents with her own and her children's support4 ,,xxv ,,are ,,you ,a ,,good ,,father8 ,are you a good father to your daughter1 ,mr4 ,man8 ,you smile derisively at my question4 ,a good father to your little girl8 ,you'll tell the world you are6 ,why1 she is just the very core of your heart1 and there hasn't been a blessed thing that she has wanted since the day she was born that you haven't given her4 ,why1 you have almost broken your neck trying to get the moon for her when she cried for it4 ,pretty dresses1 fashionable schools1 good times1 her own car1 far more luxuries than you could afford her1 you have lavished upon her without stint4 ,you have kept her wrapped in cotton wool1 and she has never known there was such a thing as work or responsibility or self-denial in the world4 ,you may have failed in many other directions in doing your full duty1 but you can pat yourself on the back and thank ,god that you have been a good father6 ,well1 let me tell you that if all you have done for your daughter is just to pamper her and spoil her and make her weak and selfish and self-centered1 you have not been a good father4 ,you have been the worst sort of father4 ,you have never looked upon your daughter as anything but a pretty doll to dress up and play with1 and dolls cannot take care of themselves in the rough-and-tumble fight of life4 ,sooner or later they are apt to get broken4 ,let me tell you what ,i consider a good father4 ,a good father is a man who doesn't look upon his daughter as a toy or a piece of bric-a-brac1 but as a human being who has been born with the heavy handicap of the feminine sex upon her4 ,that means that she will always be less strong than a boy1 less capable of taking care of herself1 in far more danger4 ,fewer opportunities will be open to her1 and many more perils beset her than would a boy4 ,therefore1 she needs more protection4 ,she needs to be better trained to deal with the world4 ,so the good father sees to it that his girl gets the very best education that she will take4 ,not the flubdub1 fluffy ruffles sort1 but a solid1 practical education that develops whatever gray matter she has got in her pretty little head1 that teaches her to think and reason and that gives her a solid foundation on which to rear her house of life4 ,then the good father has his daughter taught some profession or trade whereby she can earn a living1 and he has her follow this occupation for at least a year4 ,he does this for many reasons4 ,he does it because he knows how easily money is lost1 and he wants to know that his daughter has in herself the skill and ability to make her own living if she is ever thrown on her own resources4 ,he does it because he knows the knowledge that she can stand on her own feet and earn her own bread and butter and cake1 gives a girl a poise nothing else in the world can give4 ,he does it because the discipline of a business office1 the experience in handling money and an insight into the troubles and problems of men are the best preparation any girl can have for matrimony4 ,a good father chums with his daughter4 ,he begins being confidential with her in her cradle1 and this makes it natural that when she grows up she should discuss with him the boys who come to see her1 and that father should be able to form her tastes and assiduously guide her in her choice of a husband4 ,girls know nothing about men4 ,it is impossible that they should1 but there is nothing about any young chap that father can't find out1 and if he knew that this youth had a hectic past1 or that one drank1 or the other one was a trifling ne'er-do-well1 it would be the simplest thing possible to prevent many an unhappy marriage by making daughter see a suitor through the sophisticated eyes of a worldly-wise man1 instead of the romantic ones of a young girl4 ,a good father tries to protect his daughter after he is dead4 ,so1 when he makes his will he leaves her whatever money he has to bequeath her tied up good and tight in a trust company so that she cannot touch anything but the interest4 ,he knows that every woman who has any money is the foredoomed prey of get-rich-quick sharks and all of her parasitic relatives4 ,he has seen too many women sell their gilt-edge bonds and invest the proceeds in wildcat stock that promised to pay #dj per cent and never paid a penny4 ,he has seen too many women lend their money without security to ,deacon ,jones1 because he prayed so beautifully1 or to ,uncle ,john1 because they didn't have the nerve to say 8,no0 to a member of the family4 ,above all1 a good father leaves his daughter's money in trust for her1 not only to save her money but to save her from friction with her husband4 ,he has seen many a man graft his wife's fortune deliberately1 and he has seen many more good men1 who were poor business men1 bring their wives to poverty4 ,and he knows that it takes more backbone than the average woman possesses to hold on to her money when the man she loves is continually asking her for it4 ,so father saves her the necessity of any arguments on the subject4 ,are you doing these things for your daughter1 ,mr4 ,man8 ,are you a good father8 ,,xxvi ,,the ,,moral ,,muscles ,,of ,,your ,,children ,the most overdressed and overindulged children are those whose parents were poor in their youth4 ,the most undisciplined and uncontrolled children are those whose parents were reared in strict and stern households4 ,when you see a little girl playing around in a befrilled lace and embroidered dress and silk stockings1 you do not need to be told that at her age her mother wore gingham and went barefooted4 ,when you see a young boy splitting the road open in an imported car you know that when his father was a lad he trudged on foot to the factory with his dinner pail on his arm4 ,when you see ill-mannered young people who smoke and drink and carouse and recognize no law but their own pleasure2 who run roughshod over the rights of others2 who have no respect for age1 and who either patronize their parents or treat them with contempt1 you know that they are the offspring of fathers and mothers who were given few privileges when they were young and who were coerced by determined and strong-handed parents into walking the straight and narrow path4 ,nothing is more common than to hear people say1 8,i don't want my children to be denied things as ,i was in my childhood02 8,i don't want my children to have to work as ,i did when ,i was a child02 8,i don't want my children to be suppressed and tyrannized over as ,i was when ,i was young40 ,indeed1 so common is this feeling that sometimes it seems that the present generation is being brought up by the rule of contraries1 and that the only fixed idea that many parents have is to rear their sons and daughters exactly opposite from the way they were reared2 to give them everything they didn't have and to let them do everything they were not permitted to do4 ,there is something very pathetic in this4 ,it speaks so eloquently of the ungratified cravings of childhood1 of the weariness of little hands that never knew any playtime2 of the thwarted desires for pleasure at the time of life when one is mad for amusement1 and it is easy to understand why parents whose own childhood was stinted and dull should want to lap their children in luxury and give them all the fun they missed4 ,but in trying to save their children the hardships they have gone through1 they are also cutting their sons and daughters off from the experiences that make such men and women as they are themselves--the kind of men and women who rise from poverty to fortune and from obscurity to fame4 ,for it is not in the lap of ease that successes are made4 ,it takes struggle and self-denial and discipline to form character4 ,that is why we have the proverb that it is three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves4 ,the poor man by energy and industry piles up a fortune1 but because he has had to work and save in his youth he teaches his children to be idlers and wasters and spenders1 and they run through their fortune and their children must go to work again at the bottom of the wheel4 ,probably the children of the self-made man have naturally just as much ability as he has1 but they nearly always amount to nothing1 because their foolish father has denied them all the advantages he had when he was young and he has enervated them with indulgences4 ,people who have been brought up in puritanic homes almost invariably let their children run wild4 ,they put no restraints upon them4 ,they demand nothing of them4 ,they resent the lack of liberty they had in their youth1 and so they give their children license4 ,they do not seem to realize that the system at which they rail made good citizens1 instead of the hoodlums which they are turning out4 ,they do not reflect that they owe their health and strength to clean living2 that because they were made to do things they formed habits of industry2 that because they were made to do hard things just because it was a duty to do them they developed the grit which keeps men and women from being quitters2 that because they were taught obedience and self-control they became captains of their own souls and masters of their fate1 instead of being the playthings of their passions and emotions4 ,they must know1 if they stop to think at all1 how much better fitted they were to meet life1 how much more secure they were of happiness than are their children1 who have never been taught to do anything they do not want to do1 or to deny themselves the gratification of any appetite or desire4 ,for life doesn't change4 ,the world does not alter and no matter how much we would like to soft-pad existence for our children and stand between them and every hardship and sorrow1 we cannot do it4 ,at the last1 in one way or another1 they must come to grips with fate1 and when they do the weak and dissolute will perish4 ,the spendthrifts will come to want4 ,the self-seekers will have their hearts broken4 ,of course1 it is a great temptation for parents to lavish upon their children everything that money will buy1 and it is much easier to give strong-willed youngsters their heads and let them go their own gait than it is to hold them in check1 but that way destruction lies for the child4 ,and this is something that parents1 who are denying their children the struggle of life that made them what they are1 might well reflect upon4 ,,xxvii ,,the ,,mother-,,in-,,law ,undoubtedly there is no other thing over which so many tears are shed and which is such a potent source of discord and misery as in-laws4 ,innumerable young women have the happiness of their youth wrecked by their quarrels with their mothers-in-law4 ,innumerable old women have their last days made bitter to them by the knowledge that they are unwelcome guests in their sons' houses and that their daughters-in-law hate them4 ,innumerable men are made miserable by being torn between the two women they love1 who fight over them like dogs over a bone4 ,discussing this subject the other day1 a woman who is a mother-in-law said3 8,like everything else1 the mother-in-law question is a fifty-fifty proposition1 and when they don't get along together both are to blame4 ,certainly it isn't an easy thing for a woman who has run her own house and been at the head of everything to take a back seat in her daughter-in-law's home4 ,and it isn't easy to forget that your children are your children and to keep hands off in their affairs and treat them with the formality you would strangers4 8,on the other hand1 most daughters-in-law meet their mothers-in-law with a chip on their shoulders and are always hunting for trouble4 ,they seem to feel that when a man marries he should forget the mother who bore him and wipe out the memory of all the years of close association that there has been between them4 ,they are even jealous of the slightest attention and consideration that their husbands show their mothers4 8,they seem to forget that if it wasn't for these much-resented mothers-in-law they wouldn't have any husbands at all1 and that the better husbands they have the more they owe to their mothers-in-law4 8,for if a man is tender1 and kind1 and generous1 and considerate to his wife1 it is because his mother has taught him to be chivalrous to women4 ,she has trained him to be a good husband just as she has trained him to be a good citizen1 and he honors and respects his wife because he so greatly honors and respects his mother4 8,you never saw a bad son who was a good husband4 ,you never hear of a man who abused and cursed his mother1 and regarded her as only a slave to wait upon him1 who didn't treat his wife the same way4 ,and so we mothers who raise up clean1 straight sons1 who enter into marriage with high ideals and a determination to cherish their wives and make them happy1 have done the girls who get them such a service as they could not repay if they were down on their knees before us the balance of their days4 8,but if any daughter-in-law has ever lifted her voice in thanks to her mother-in-law for teaching her son to be unselfish1 or to be generous with money1 or to pay her the little attentions that women love1 ,i have never heard of it4 8,and there is another queer thing about daughters-in-law4 ,they seem to think that marriage should obliterate a man's past and break all the ties of his life4 8,he and his mother may have been the closest of companions2 he may have asked her advice on every subject and talked over all of his plans with her1 but woe be unto all concerned if he tries that after he takes a wife4 8,ninety-nine times out of a hundred the wife grows green-eyed and considers it rank treachery to her1 and for the sake of peace mother and son have to forego the little talks that were such a joy to them both or else do this stealthily and hold a stolen rendezvous4 8,yet it does look as if any woman who wasn't a moron would have sense enough to see that any man who could forget his mother and all he owed to her would be such a disloyal creature that he would forget his wife when some younger and fairer woman came along4 8,of course1 the chief charge that our daughters-in-law have against us is that we are always meddling in their affairs4 ,perhaps we do1 but aren't our children's affairs our affairs too8 ,hasn't the mother who has raised her son to manhood and who has made him strong and capable of earning a fine salary a right to say something when she sees his hard-earned money being wasted1 his home neglected and his health ruined by bad cooking8 8,if a mother saw her own daughter treating her husband that way1 she would rebuke her and show her where she was making a fatal mistake1 and the daughter would not resent it4 ,why can't a daughter-in-law take the same advice and profit by it1 instead of flying at the throat of the mother-in-law and considering herself a martyr to mother-in-lawism8 8,of course1 there are exceptions to all rules4 ,i know daughters-in-law who are real daughters to their husbands' mothers4 ,i even know daughters-in-law who have borne with angelic patience cranky women who could not even get along with their own daughters4 ,and ,i know mothers-in-law whose presence is like a benediction in a house and others who are firebrands wherever they go4 ,so perhaps there is no way to settle the question so long as we are all human and not female saints4 ,but ,god pity the mother who is obliged to live with her children1 no matter how kind they may be6 ,she is always the fifth wheel1 and feels it4 ,perhaps those savages who kill off all the old people haven't such a bad plan of disposing of the question1 after all40 ,,xxviii ,,why ,,our ,,families ,,rile ,,us ,a woman wants to know why it is that we find it harder to get along with our families than we do with other people1 and why our own blood-and-kin rile us more than anybody else on earth4 ,probably the main reason why we find it so difficult to live in peace and harmony with those who are really near and dear to us is because we are too much alike4 ,we have inherited the same traits of character1 and when these come in collision there is a resounding crash1 and the noise of wrecked tempers and exploding wrath4 ,father1 an iron-willed1 tyrannical gentleman1 who has ruled his little world like a despot1 cannot get along with ,john1 who is of the same fiber1 and equally determined to have his own way and do as he pleases4 ,father and ,john may have a very sincere affection for each other and admire each other's good qualities1 but they can never be together an hour without getting into a fight over something4 ,mother is a born manager1 one of the ladies who honestly believe1 with the famous ,frenchman1 that she could have saved the ,almighty from making some mortifying mistakes if she had been consulted at the creation4 ,mary is mother's own daughter in her perfect belief that she knows exactly how to run the universe4 ,what wonder1 then1 that they clash over every gown and hat that is bought2 over every man that comes to see ,mary2 over everywhere that ,mary goes8 ,sometimes the reason that we can't get along with our own people is because we are so entirely different from them4 ,often and often children are changelings1 and those of our own flesh have no tie of spiritual kinship with us4 ,the father who is a hard-headed1 practical business man has nothing in common with the son who is a quivering bunch of nerves and sensibilities2 who is a dreamer of dreams1 and who counts wealth in terms of beauty1 instead of dollars4 ,mother1 who was a beauty and a belle in her day1 with scores of lovers sighing at her feet1 has looked forward to reliving her triumphs in her daughter4 ,and when daughter grows up to be a big1 sturdy young person who wants to go into business and who loathes society1 what wonder that they get on each other's nerves8 ,when you hear parents speak bitterly of what a disappointment children are1 and how ungrateful1 it merely means that their children are different from them4 ,john insists on being a doctor or a lawyer instead of going into the hardware business father has been building up for him for twenty years4 ,mary wants to marry a poor young man1 instead of the nice1 settled1 rich widower mother has picked out for her4 ,other people find ,john brilliant and talented4 ,father calls him a fool to his face because he won't do father's way4 ,other women are sympathetic with ,mary's romance1 and her willingness to sacrifice riches for love4 ,it infuriates mother to see her throwing an establishment and pearls and a limousine away1 for a sentiment4 ,often the reason we cannot get along with our own families is because they are like a mirror in which we see our own faults in all their hideousness4 ,father's lack of ambition that has kept him from making anything of his life2 mother's shiftlessness and wastefulness that have kept the family poor2 brother's brutal temper2 sister's sharp tongue that cuts like a two-edge sword--these irritate us1 and we find them harder to forgive than we would such defects in other people because we know that we are1 ourselves1 prone to just these weaknesses4 ,besides these fundamental reasons why it is hard to get along with our relatives1 there are a thousand minor causes of discord4 ,one of the principal ones is the lack of politeness in the family circle1 for most people feel that good manners are like good clothes1 and should be worn only for the benefit of company4 ,it is an amazing but true thing that practically the only people who ever say mean1 insulting1 wounding things to us are those of our own household4 ,strangers listen to us with apparent interest1 and laugh at our jokes4 ,our friends compliment our new frocks and cars4 ,if our casual acquaintances do not like our taste or respect our judgment1 they keep silent about it4 ,it is our families who stab our vanity to the quick by yawning in our faces1 and asking us if we are going to tell that old story over again2 who bluntly inform us that our new hat is ten years too young for us1 and that there is nothing so ridiculous as old women trying to be flappers2 who criticize the way we are raising our children1 and tell us the home truths we would rather die than hear4 ,still another reason why it is hard to get along with our families is because it is generally held that the mere fact that you love people gives you a perfect right to nag them4 ,we speak of family ties as binding4 ,binding is right1 for in the average home no one can rise up or sit down1 eat or fast1 go or come1 without having to give an account of why he or she did it or didn't do it1 and being advised to do it some other way4 ,it is for these1 and a thousand other reasons1 that we find it difficult to get along with our families1 and fly to those who do not feel that they have a right to boss1 correct1 advise or otherwise interfere with us in the pursuit of life1 liberty and happiness4 ,,xxix ,,our ,,lives ,,are ,,what ,,we ,,make ,,them ,you have been in factory towns where more or less benevolent corporations have built rows upon rows of houses1 each one as like its neighbor as peas in a pod4 ,but one house would have dirty1 grimy1 unwashed windows1 with old newspapers or rags stuffed in a broken window pane4 ,the yard would be filled with old cans and ashes and refuse1 and the place would look like a shack1 unfit for human habitation4 ,the house next door would have bright and shining windows1 with clean1 freshly starched muslin curtains and a gay red geranium in a pot showing between them4 ,flowers would be blooming in the yard1 and a vine trained over the doorway1 and the place would be a home1 bright1 cheerful and attractive4 ,yet the two houses were exactly alike4 ,the only difference was in what the people in them made of them4 ,one cook can take a cheap cut of meat and a handful of vegetables and make of them a ragout1 over which an epicure would smack his lips4 ,another cook will take the same meat and vegetables and make of them a watery stew1 with neither flavor nor nutriment to it4 ,it is the same material1 but the difference is in the cooks4 ,that is the way it is all through life4 ,there are a few fortunate individuals who seem to be the darlings of the gods1 and with whom ,lady ,luck walks hand in hand4 ,and there are also a few miserable ones who appear to have been born double-crossed by fate4 ,but the great majority of us get a pretty even deal4 ,we have the same family relationships4 ,we go to the same schools4 ,we have the same chance to work1 and the balance is up to us4 ,we are happy or miserable1 successful or failures1 rich or poor1 according to what we make out of our lives4 ,we marry1 millions of us4 ,and set up homes4 ,one out of every seven of the marriages ends in divorce4 ,more than three-fourths of the homes are wrecked1 not because there is anything especially wrong1 not because either husband or wife is an outbreaking criminal1 but because they are too ignorant or too selfish to make their marriage a success4 ,all husbands and wives are cut off the same bolt of humanity4 ,no man is perfect4 ,no woman is an angel4 ,no domestic machine runs along without a jar or a hitch4 ,every marriage calls for sacrifices1 for patience1 for forgiveness1 endurance1 and you get out of it just what you put into it--heaven or hell4 ,you go to homes that simply irradiate peace and love and good cheer1 where there is a happy and contented man1 and a smiling and blissful woman3 where there are fine children growing up in the right atmosphere4 ,and you go to another home that is a place of torment1 where a surly man snarls and snaps1 and a disgruntled woman whines and complains1 and unruly1 uncontrolled children fight like the ,kilkenny cats4 ,yet both of these families started out with the same equipment4 ,both couples were in love when they were married4 ,both had about the same amount of money4 ,both were called upon to make the same sacrifices4 ,both had the same chances at happiness4 ,yet one made a success of marriage1 and the other failed4 ,we talk about opportunity1 and when we fail we lay the blame on luck4 ,we say we never had a chance4 ,but the truth is that we are our own luck1 that we make our own opportunities4 ,did you ever think that every day in the year there are thousands of green country boys going into every big city1 seeking their fortunes1 and thousands of city boys leaving those same cities because they think that everything is overcrowded and overdone1 and that they have no opportunity there8 ,and many of those country boys will find the chance the city boy overlooked1 and pick up the fortune he passed by4 ,the world is full of failures1 croaking that there is no money in farming or the mercantile business1 and warning young men that they will starve if they become lawyers1 or doctors1 or actors1 or writers1 or artists4 ,yet there are rich farmers with bursting granaries4 ,everywhere millionaire business men4 ,there are world-famous lawyers and doctors and matine idols and men who write best sellers4 ,and the successes are side by side with the failures1 working in the same environment1 under the same conditions1 and the only difference is the difference in the men themselves4 ,it is the difference in the energy1 the grit1 the determination1 the stick-at-iveness1 the heart and soul and brains that one man put into his work and the other didn't4 ,whether we are happy or not depends upon ourselves1 for in reality we all have pretty much the same raw material with which to work4 ,sickness1 suffering1 the death of those we love1 disappointment1 come to us all4 ,the poorest woman alive and the millionairess bear their children in the same agony1 and weep the same tears over little coffins4 ,money does not buy love1 tenderness1 nor peace of mind1 and just as many hearts ache under silver brocade as under cotton4 ,but we can hold our souls serene if we will4 ,we can keep from fretting4 ,we can resolutely extract the sweet instead of the bitter out of life4 ,we can dwell on our blessings instead of our miseries1 and we can acquire a philosophy that will enable us to laugh instead of weep over the misadventures that befall us4 ,for our lives are what we make them4 ,it is all up to us4 ,,xxx ,,husband ,,losers ,three divorced women were talking together the other day and one of them said3 8,when we wives lose our husbands we always accuse some other woman of having stolen them from us2 and we cry out that our husbands are cruel ingrates1 who have taken the best years of our lives and then thrown us aside like broken toys when we were no longer young and beautiful4 ,and we pose as blameless martyrs who are the pitiful victims of man's perfidy4 8,of course1 it saves our faces to be able to lay all the blame for our wrecked homes on others1 and it soothes our hurt vanity to be wept over as a poor1 innocent1 deserted wife4 ,but in the still watches of the night1 when we have it out with our own souls1 there are mighty few of us who can shrive our consciences and know that we are blameless4 8,most of us know in our heart of hearts that if our husband's love died1 we did our part in administering the lethal dose4 ,we may have done it through ignorance1 through carelessness1 through blundering stupidity2 we may have even done it with the best intentions in the world and with the firm conviction that we were forcing down their throats a remedy that would cure them of all the little ailments and weakness of character from which they suffered4 ,but the point is1 we did it4 ,we were accessory to the crime1 and we could have prevented it if we had so wished4 8,now1 as you know1 my husband forsook me for his secretary4 ,i called her a thief who had used her position to rob me of a husband and my little children of their father1 and ,i looked upon him with bitterness and contempt1 as a poor weakling who let an adventuress make him forget his honor as a man and his duty to his wife and children4 ,i called ,heaven to witness that ,i was innocent and that ,i had been a good1 true1 virtuous woman1 who had always done her duty to her family4 ,it took me a long time to see that1 if my husband grew weary of me1 ,i had made him tired by my incessant nagging and fault finding2 that if he ceased to love me1 it was because ,i was no longer lovable1 and that the other woman had not really stolen him from me4 ,i had simply handed him over to her on a silver salver4 8,you see1 ,i was one of the wives who did not realize that it is easy enough to get a husband1 but the work comes in in keeping one4 ,i thought that after a woman was married she could let herself go1 and so ,i never bothered to keep myself dolled up at home1 or to try to make myself pleasant and agreeable4 ,i went in negligee1 both as to clothes and manners4 ,any old rag was good enough to wear at home4 ,any disagreeable topic was a suitable breakfast-table discussion1 and ,i felt perfectly free to quarrel with my husband1 and criticize him1 and ridicule all of his little faults and idiosyncrasies4 8,i forgot that he went from a sloppy wife to an office where a trim1 perfectly groomed woman1 younger and better looking than ,i1 waited for him4 ,i forgot that he went from my nagging and fault finding to a girl who was paid to agree with him and whose job depended largely on her flattering him and telling him how wonderful and great he was4 ,it wouldn't have been human for him not to constitute a daily comparison between us1 and it was inevitable that when he did1 that ,i should lose out4 ,if ,i had kept my doors locked and my burglar alarms in working order no one could have looted my home4 ,and so ,i am just as responsible for the wreck of it as are those who broke it up40 8,my husband was a gay1 pleasure-loving man10 said the second divorcee4 8,he always wanted to be going somewhere4 ,he loved to be in the thick of crowds4 ,he adored dancing1 and restaurants1 and the bright lights4 ,he loved fine clothes1 and always wanted me to look like a fashion plate4 ,now1 ,i am a serious-minded woman and was brought up to take a serious view of things1 and ,i felt it my duty to cure my husband of his frivolity by leading him up to what ,i considered the higher life4 ,i began by trying to wean him away from his old friends1 on whom ,i turned such a cold shoulder that they soon ceased coming to the house4 ,i lectured him about his extravagance and the way he threw away money1 and finally got possession of the family purse and doled out dimes to him4 ,i wouldn't go out with him of an evening1 and ,i rarely let him go without a scene4 ,at first he submitted1 but he looked bored and sulky1 and then he broke out of jail1 which was all his home had come to be to him1 and that was the beginning of the end4 8,for1 of course1 when ,i wouldn't play with him he found some other woman who would1 and who wouldn't wet-blanket every occasion by her moral strictures or spoil every meal at a restaurant by looking at the pay check4 ,if ,i had been willing to flatter him1 and jolly him1 and dance with him1 and let him spend his money on me1 he would never have left me4 ,but ,i wouldn't do it1 and my austerity got on his nerves4 ,he wanted a playmate instead of a censor1 and so ,i feel that ,i am just as much to blame as he was40 8,i lost my husband through ambition10 said the third divorcee4 8,he was an artist of great talent1 and ,i was mad for him to win fame and money1 so ,i never let him rest4 ,i prodded him on all the time4 ,i was forever a goad in his side1 and so ,i became to him a sort of incarnate conscience1 a perpetual reminder of all the unpleasant duties of life4 ,he was temperamental1 a child of impulse1 and ,i became his task-mistress1 a slave driver to him4 ,finally he got to the place where he could stand it no more1 and he eloped with a young girl as irresponsible as he was4 ,she will never push him on to success as ,i would have done1 but she lets him follow every whim and she will hold him1 as ,i could have done if ,i had had intelligence enough to see that you can't make a work horse out of ,pegasus40 8,how much happiness we might save if only our wisdom did not come too late10 sighed the first woman4 ,,xxxi ,,martha ,,or ,,mary8 ,clever ,mary--who1 take it from me1 knows her way about--was talking about her friend1 ,martha1 the other day4 8,of course1 ,martha is the ,perfect ,housewife10 she said1 8but she is a mighty poor wife4 ,without doubt1 she is a great and glorious housekeeper and a cook and baker and cleaner4 ,never have ,i seen a rumple in her curtains4 ,her bedspreads are like the driven snow4 ,and you could eat off her floors4 ,her house is so immaculate that her husband must feel a perfect stranger in it1 and like a bull in a china shop4 8,but her days are so taken up with work that she has time for nothing else--not a minute to read or to play1 or to be a companion to her husband4 ,in fact1 she is so worn out by the time night comes that she is too tired to do anything but go to bed4 8,her husband loves to read1 but if he sits up late1 the light annoys her so much that she can't sleep1 so she says4 ,so she nags him until he gives it up in disgust4 ,she1 herself1 never reads anything except the advertisements of the department stores in the papers1 and the thrilling accounts of vacuum cleaners and patent breakfast foods in the backs of the magazines4 ,and when her husband tries to talk to her about the things he is interested in--books1 sports1 his business--he had just as well try to ring any other dumbbell4 8,now1 ,i do all my own housework1 and ,i must be a fairly capable housewife1 for my mother-in-law has put her ,o4,k4 on me1 and that settles that4 ,but there isn't a spot in my house where we can't park ourselves at any time4 ,my library table is filled with books and magazines1 and if husband drops ashes and scatters the ,sunday papers all over the place1 ,i let him1 and gently and painlessly remove them after he has passed on4 8,i don't really know anything about sports4 ,i wouldn't recognize a home run if ,i met it on the street1 but when hubby wants to talk about baseball ,i assume an intelligent expression4 ,and ,i am never too tired to play with my husband4 ,i grab my hat the minute he suggests the movies4 ,i can get ready to go anywhere in an hour4 ,i just adjust my complexion--,martha considers that a real vice--and we are off4 8,martha can't understand why my husband very rarely goes away from home of an evening and almost never without me--while hers beats it to the corner drug store as soon as he has eaten his superexcellent dinner4 ,and ,i just can't make her see that it is because she puts her house before him4 ,she worships cleanliness and order1 and sacrifices everything to them4 ,the first thing ,martha knows1 she is going to lose her husband1 and she will go around wailing and weeping and telling how hard she worked and what a good housekeeper she was4 ,she never will know that she literally drove him away from her with a broom handle4 8,i told ,martha the other day that if she would spend less time polishing her mahogany and more time polishing her finger nails and rubbing up her mind1 it would be better for her4 ,but she just smiled that superior smile that a model housekeeper always bestows on the woman whom she suspects of having dust on the back pantry shelf1 and made a dive for a basement sale of somebody's patent cleaning fluid40 ,mary is right4 ,cleanliness and order are two of the domestic virtues that may easily be converted into vices4 ,we all know spick and span houses that are no more homes than a shiny tin box would be4 ,nobody would dare disarrange a sofa cushion in one of them4 ,nobody would have the courage to move a chair from its appointed place4 ,to track a bit of mud on one of the shining floors would be a high crime and misdemeanor4 ,to leave anything hanging around would be a sacrilege unspeakable4 ,husband and children flee these temples of order and cleanliness as they would a torture chamber4 ,and they live in dread and fear of the woman who has worked herself cross and irritable attaining her ideal of housewifery4 ,most of the real homes are places not too bright and good for human nature's daily use4 ,they are places where you can take your ease2 places run on a flexible schedule and only reasonably clean and orderly4 ,doubtless1 the old lady who laid down the maxim1 8,feed the brute10 as a rule for retaining a husband's affections said a wise mouthful to women4 ,but more is to be added1 for man does not live by bread alone1 and it is just as important to feed his soul as his stomach4 ,every woman who fails to give her husband good1 nourishing food fails as a wife1 but she fails even more if she does not give him companionship4 ,for1 after all1 there is a good restaurant on every corner where a man can satisfy his physical hunger1 but none but his wife can minister to his spiritual hunger4 ,foolish is the woman who doesn't realize this and who spends her time keeping her house clean instead of making it a home4 ,but that is the trouble with matrimony4 ,a woman can't be either a ,martha or a ,mary4 ,to be a good wife she has got to be both4 ,,xxxii ,,the ,t4 ,b4 ,m4 ,,at ,,home ,a man wants to know if ,i don't think his wife is very wrong and foolish to be hurt and offended because he is often irritable and cross at home4 ,he says that she knows that he adores her1 and that he is a model of all the standardized domestic virtues1 but that he works all day under a terrific strain1 and by the time night comes his nerves are worn to a frazzle4 ,he thinks that his wife should appreciate this1 and that instead of further rasping them with argumentation1 she should apply a soothing emolument to them4 ,i agree with the gentleman that it is always the part of prudence for a wife to give the soft answer that turneth away wrath1 instead of retorting with a snappy comeback when her husband makes a nasty crack at her4 ,it certainly doesn't add to the peace and harmony of a home for a wife to be ready to jump into her fighting clothes every time her husband makes a pass at her4 ,nothing comes of family rows but bitterness1 and anger1 and disillusion4 ,nor does any love long survive them4 ,i also agree with the gentleman that any woman who has cut her wisdom teeth on matrimony should be able to assay her husband's temper and tell how much of it is due to raw nerves and how much to pure cussedness1 and so know when to spread the salve and when to hand him a solar-plexus blow4 ,furthermore1 ,i opine that a wife who starts anything with her husband at evening until after he is fed and rested1 and has had his smoke and his paper unmolested1 deserves to be put in the ,home for the ,incurably ,feeble-,minded for the balance of her natural life or else bound over by the courts to keep the peace4 ,for she is either lacking in brains or just loves a fight for the fight's sake4 ,it is the greatest possible pity that women haven't more sense of humor than they have1 for if they did they would be able to laugh at many things their husbands do over which they shed scalding tears4 ,it would enable them to see how really funny it is for a big man to get into a babyish tantrum over nothing and how much easier it is to kid him out of it than it is to make a scene over it4 ,unhappily1 however1 few women have a funny bone1 and fewer still can see the joke when it is on them1 and so husbands and wives meet temper with temper and irritability with irritability1 and the domestic war goes merrily on4 ,the mistake that most wives make is in taking their husbands too seriously4 ,they have heard so much about the mighty masculine intellect that they think their husbands are profound1 thoughtful human beings who mean every word they say and whose every act is part of a deeply considered plan of life4 ,whereas the truth is that men babble just as meaninglessly as women do1 and are the creatures of impulse4 ,also1 women are under the misapprehension that they have a monopoly on nerves1 and that hysterics are the sole prerogative of the feminine sex4 ,these beliefs make women attach a significance to the things that men say and do to which they are not entitled2 and it makes them 8get their husbands wrong0 and break their hearts over crimes that the poor1 blundering men do not even know that they are committing4 ,in consequence whereof the wife's feelings are in a constant state of laceration1 and she meets each hard knock with a still harder one1 or else goes off and salts her wounds down in the brine of her tears4 ,now1 no one will argue that a human cyclone is a pleasant companion to live with1 nor would any sane woman pick out a man who is giving a life-like imitation of the ,day of ,wrath with whom to spend her evenings4 ,but1 all the same1 women make themselves unnecessarily miserable by taking their husbands' humors too seriously4 ,the cruel speeches that stab the wife to the soul are not prompted by malice toward her4 ,they are the reaction of nerves that have been frazzled to the breaking point by the worries of the day at the office4 ,the frozen silence which the wife finds it so hard to endure is just sheer exhaustion of mind and body1 and the woman who can just take her husband's moods this way can not only save herself many a tearfest1 but can make her husband eat out of her hand by feeding him and laughing at him and jollying him along4 ,certainly1 the woman who is married to a nervous1 overworked man might well do a little mental balancing of accounts and check off a lot of temper1 and impatience1 and unreason1 and fault finding against the finery he gives her1 and the success he has achieved1 of which she is so proud and which he has literally bought with his life's blood4 ,she might well forgive his faults and deal leniently with them1 since they are the direct result of his struggle to lap her in luxury4 ,she is1 believe me1 a discerning and a tender wife who answers her husband's irascible speeches with a pat on the head and a 8there1 there1 it's all right10 as she would a sick and fretful child1 instead of going to the mat with him4 ,so much for the wife's side of the question4 ,now for the husband's4 ,business furnishes no alibi for surliness1 and grouchiness1 and general disagreeableness4 ,no man has a right to come home at night and dump down on his own hearthstone all the nerves1 and temper1 and irritability he has kept bottled up in him all day4 ,because a woman has the misfortune to be a man's wife is no reason he should insult her and say to her things that he would not say to any other woman who had an able-bodied brother1 or that he would not dream of saying to any woman who had #aj to spend across his counter1 or who was his client1 or his patient4 ,if a man can control his temper and his tongue in dealing with the outside world1 he can control it still at home4 ,if he can be polite and courteous and flattering to other women1 he can make the same gracious speeches to his wife1 instead of growling like a bear when she asks him a simple question4 ,and if he has any sense of honor1 he will be the more careful of what he says to his wife than he is to the others1 because his attitude means nothing to them1 but his wife's whole happiness is dependent on the way he treats her4 ,nor does the fact that he overworks excuse a man's irritability at home4 ,nine wives out of ten would rather have a little more amiability from their husbands and less money1 if they had to choose between the two4 ,the beloved husbands and wives are not those who work themselves into a state of nervous irritability for their families4 ,they are those who keep themselves calm1 and good natured1 and pleasant to live with4 ,to expect other people to overlook our temper and forgive the cross and cruel speeches that we flash out at them without provocation is demanding too much of human nature4 ,,xxxiii ,,don',t ,,be ,,afraid ,,to ,,let ,,your ,,husband ,,see ,,you ,,love ,,him ,a woman asks this question3 8,is it wise for a wife who loves her husband devotedly to let him see how dear he is to her8 ,does the knowledge that her heart is his for keeps make him undervalue it8 ,does she best keep his interest in her alive by keeping him on the anxious seat8 ,after all1 a husband is still a man1 and we know that before marriage the more difficult a woman is to win the more a man chases her2 and the more a woman throws herself at a man's head the more adroitly he dodges her4 ,so the question is1 ,does this same state of affairs continue after marriage8 ,do men want their wives to blow hot and cold1 as they do their sweethearts1 or do they desire them to be a good1 steady1 reliable fire on the hearthstone80 ,a man's attitude toward love undergoes a complete change on his wedding day4 ,during his courtship1 the thing that has been of more importance to him than anything else in the world has been the state of mind of his lady love4 ,it has been a wonderful1 sentimental adventure following all her moods and tenses1 and plumbing the depths of her emotions4 ,it has roused his sporting blood for her to be coy and difficult4 ,taking her away from his rivals was a game of fascinating intrigue1 and he thrilled with the sense of being a conquering hero when she finally surrendered to him4 ,but marriage is another pair of sleeves4 ,it is a different story altogether4 ,a man marries to end romance1 not to have it to-be-continued-in-our-next serial that will run on the balance of his life4 ,he wants to be done with doubts1 and fears1 and heart burnings1 and speculation about the woman he loves1 so that he will be free to give his undivided attention to his business4 ,therefore the tactics that won a woman a husband do not serve to hold him1 and the wife who tries to pique her husband's interest in her by her flirtations with other men is more apt to land in the divorce court than to strengthen her position in the domestic love nest4 ,for men do not wish to be kept guessing about their wives4 ,they want to be sure of them4 ,the man who is married to a woman who plays around with other men and who keeps him on the ragged edge of nervous prostration with jealousies and suspicions does not think that he has drawn a capital prize in the matrimonial lottery4 ,on the contrary1 he thinks that he has been gold-bricked1 and he is not crazy over his bargain4 ,no woman need be afraid to let her husband know how much she loves him1 because her love makes the strongest claim she can possibly have upon him4 ,many a man who has made an unsuitable marriage with a woman with whom he had no real companionship2 many a man who has outgrown the woman he married in his youth1 is kept faithful to her by the knowledge of her devotion to him4 ,it takes a brute to hurt the one who worships you1 or to leave the one whose whole life is bound up in you4 ,nor is there any charm of mind or person that appeals to a man so much as just the certainty of a wife's love and the sure knowledge that if all the world turned against him1 there is one who would still be standing shoulder to shoulder with him2 some one who would go down to the gates of death with him1 or wait outside of the prison gates for him2 some one whom neither disease nor poverty nor disgrace would alienate from him4 ,the coquettish woman who thinks to keep her husband's affection for her at fever heat by keeping him uncertain of her has no such hold upon her man as has the wife whose husband's heart doth safely trust in her1 sure that whatever else fails him in life1 her love will never fail4 ,a wife need not be afraid to show her husband her love1 because men are just as heart hungry as women are4 ,they crave affection and appreciation just as much as women do1 and they long just as much as women do to be petted and fussed over4 ,no complaint is more common from women than that their husbands stop all love-making at the altar with a suddenness that jars the very marrow of their bones4 ,they say that the men to whom they are married never seem to think that they long to be told that they are still loved and admired1 and that they have made good as wives4 ,they yearn for a kiss that is warm with passion1 instead of a duty peck on the cheek that has about as much flavor to it as a cold batter cake4 ,but1 apparently1 it never occurs to these wives who are starving for some sign of real living affection themselves that their husbands are also on the bread line1 mutely begging for a stray crumb of love4 ,they do not realize that a great big1 husky1 successful man could want to be chucked under the chin1 and babied1 and told that he was the most booful thing on earth1 and that his wifeikins got down on her knees and thanked ,god every night because she was lucky enough to get him1 and that every day1 in every way1 she loved him better and better4 ,yet there isn't a man in the world that wouldn't worship a wife who handed him that line of chatter1 and who wouldn't walk mighty straight and reverently before one who opened the doors of her heart and let him see that he was enshrined therein4 ,no4 ,no wife need be afraid of letting her husband know how much she worships him4 ,for it is love that makes the world go round1 and that greases the wheels of matrimony4 ,,xxxiv ,,queer ,,things ,,about ,,marriage ,did you ever think how many queer things there are about marriage8 ,to begin with1 isn't it queer that we permit boys and girls to get married at an age at which they are not permitted to make any other binding contract8 ,the law appoints guardians to look after the property of minors1 and prevent them from squandering it1 or being cheated out of it by sharpers1 but there is no legal safeguard to save foolish girls and boys from throwing away their life's happiness on an ill-advised marriage4 ,at a time of life when we consider a lad's judgment too immature for him to make a thousand-dollar investment1 we assume that he is worldly wise enough to pick out a life mate4 ,at an age when we think a girl's taste too unformed and too hectic to select her own clothes1 we let her choose a husband4 ,isn't the casual attitude we take toward matrimony queer8 ,marriage is the most important act in our lives1 the thing that not only makes or mars us1 but that affects thousands of people yet to be4 ,compared with marriage1 being born is a mere episode in our careers1 and dying a trivial incident4 ,yet there is no other thing that we do to which we give as little intelligent1 serious thought4 ,if we were going into a business partnership to invest our entire fortune1 we would think a long time before we committed ourselves4 ,we would consider the proposition from every angle4 ,we would look into its weak spots and try to form an honest opinion of its chances of success4 ,and we would investigate the past record of the man we were proposing to go into business with1 and find out everything about him4 ,we would ascertain what sort of a life he had led1 how honest and honorable he was1 how much he was to be trusted1 and what sort of a disposition he had1 whether he was pleasant to get along with or not4 ,yet the worst harm that our business partner could do us would be to cheat us out of our money4 ,he couldn't break our hearts and make our lives miserable4 ,if we didn't like him1 we could dissolve the partnership without any trouble or disgrace4 ,but nine times out of ten those who enter into the marriage contract1 which is the most binding contract of all1 do not take the trouble to make even the slightest investigation about the one with whom he or she is making a life partnership4 ,every day we read of people who discover that they are married to bigamists4 ,every day some husband stumbles into his wife's skeleton closet1 and finds that the woman whom he believed pure and innocent has a dark and sordid past4 ,every day some agonized mother looks at her deformed or idiotic babe1 and sees that the sins of the father have been visited on her child4 ,the man was handsome1 and he danced well1 and he had a dandy sport model car4 ,the girl was pretty1 and she had a cute trick of looking up through her lashes1 or a baby stare1 so they got married without bothering to find out a single thing about the kind of life each had led before they met4 ,they wouldn't have bought a house without having had an expert see that its title was clear and that there was no mortgage on it1 but they will marry without finding out what sort of encumbrances are on the lives of their husbands and wives4 ,they wouldn't buy a horse or a dog without looking into its pedigree and finding out what sort of stock it comes from1 and whether it is sound in wind and limb1 but they will pass diseased blood on to their children with no thought of the sort of heredity with which they are cursing them4 ,isn't it queer that men and women fail to consider the dispositions of those they marry8 ,yet that is the thing that people have to live with1 and it is what makes marriage a success or a failure4 ,it isn't high and noble principles2 it isn't truth and honor and honesty that makes or mars a man's or woman's happiness in marriage4 ,it is the temper of their husbands or wives4 ,a man may be a model of all the virtues1 and yet if he is stingy and grouchy and gloomy1 his wife will be miserable with him4 ,a woman may be as chaste as ,csar's wife1 yet if she nags1 her husband will rue the day he led her to the altar4 ,all men and women know this1 yet a girl will go along and marry a man who even before marriage gets the sulks over every little thing that goes wrong1 with whom she has to always walk on eggs to avoid riling him1 and who carries his small change in a purse with a snap lock4 ,and a man will marry a thin1 nervous1 irritable girl1 who is always getting peeved about everything1 and who never can say a thing and let it rest4 ,and they both wonder after marriage why marriage is a failure1 and why they can't get along together4 ,isn't it queer that people don't pick out the kind of husbands and wives that they want1 and that will suit them8 ,a man who is a student will marry a silly little girl who hasn't two ideas in her head to rub together4 ,in the days of courtship it was inevitable that he should take the measure of her brainlessness and find out that when he talked to her of books that he spoke of an unexplored world to her1 and that when he discussed the things in which he was interested she yawned in his face4 ,nor could he help perceiving that her chatter was the chatter of a magpie1 and the things in which she delighted were things that bored him stiff4 ,his common sense shrieked to him that marriage between two people who had not one single idea1 nor an ideal1 nor a thought1 nor a desire1 in common was bound to be a failure4 ,but the man1 wise and sophisticated in other things1 but clinging blindly to his superstitious belief in the potency of the marriage ceremony1 refused to heed the warning4 ,somehow1 he was confident that just getting married would change a silly1 ignorant girl into an intellectual woman who would be a fit companion to him2 miraculously render one who had never even read a sixth best-seller familiar with the world's best literature1 and make her prefer to discuss world topics to gossip about the people next door4 ,we wonder why poor men marry fashion-plates2 why men who love to eat1 marry girls who loathe the kitchen2 why quiet1 domestic men marry girls who live to dance and go to cabarets4 ,they are all poor1 blind heathen1 trusting in the marriage ceremony to make an extravagant girl economical1 a frivolous girl serious1 an undomestic girl domestic4 ,isn't it queer8 ,not only do we superstitiously believe in the power of the marriage ceremony to change other people1 but we actually think it will change ourselves4 ,the philanderer believes that he will never cast a roaming eye at another woman as soon as he is married4 ,the loafer believes that he will be filled full of pep and energy by the mere fact of having a wife to work for4 ,the stingy1 selfish man is confident that he will enjoy spending money on his family4 ,the girl who has never thought of anything but dolling herself up and having a good time believes that as soon as she is married she won't care any more for fine clothes or going about1 and that she will be perfectly satisfied to stay at home and save her husband's money and cook him good things to eat4 ,but alas6 the miracle of the marriage ceremony no more works on us than it does on those we marry4 ,long before the honeymoon has waned we make the discovery that somehow the mysterious something that was to change us didn't take1 and that we are the same old individuals1 with the same old tastes and desires that we always had4 ,then to so many comes the cold1 bitter knowledge that they are tied for life to one who is utterly uncongenial1 to one who bores them and gets upon their nerves4 ,and1 queerest of all is it that no matter how unhappily people have been married1 when death or divorce sets them free1 they nearly all want to try matrimony over again6 ,,xxxv ,,husbands--,,the ,,living ,,conundrum ,a woman writes me that she has been married to a man for sixteen years1 yet she has never got acquainted with him4 ,she says he is good and kind1 but indifferent to her4 ,he never finds fault with her and never praises her4 ,he spends his evenings at home by his own fireside1 but a mummy would be just about as conversational4 ,all of this has got the woman guessing1 and she can't figure out whether her husband still cares for her or not1 or whether he regards his marriage as a success or a failure4 ,good gracious1 sister1 don't imagine for an instant that you have anything unique in the way of a husband6 ,all men are full of curious peculiarities1 and no woman ever gets acquainted with one1 no matter whether she has been married to him for sixteen years or sixty4 ,for1 as an old colored friend of mine says3 8,husbands is the most undiscovered nation of people there is40 ,no woman ever understands1 for instance1 why it is that a man who was an ardent and impetuous wooer turns into a husband with about as much sentiment and pep to him as a cold buckwheat cake1 as soon as the marriage ceremony is said over him4 ,nor can she form any idea of why the man who was willing to risk his life to get her takes so little interest in her after he has got her4 ,she cannot doubt that he loved her1 because he gave great and indisputable proof of that by assuming her support for life4 ,nor can she see any reason for his change of attitude4 ,she still carries the same line of bait with which she caught him4 ,she still has the same eyes that he likened to violets drenched in dew1 but he doesn't notice them4 ,she still has the same white hands that he used to hold by the hour1 but if she wants anybody to hold them now she has to hunt up some man to whom she is not married4 ,no woman can ever understand why a man doesn't put forth the same effort to make his home a going concern as he does to make his business or profession a success4 ,if every man tried to sell himself to his wife as he does to his employer1 or a big customer1 or a valuable client1 there would be no disgruntled1 dissatisfied married women in the world4 ,if every man studied his wife's peculiarities of disposition2 if he played on her weaknesses as deftly and handled her as tactfully as he does a merchant who is about to place a big order1 or a rich patient1 every wife in the land would be eating out of her husband's hand4 ,if every man paid his wife a fair wage for her services1 as he does his stenographers and clerks1 it would take the heaviest curse off matrimony for millions of wives4 ,but1 altho to have a contented wife and a peaceful and happy home means more to a man than to make a million dollars1 not one man in a hundred ever gives any real serious thought or makes any honest effort to make his marriage a success4 ,he leaves the most important thing in his life to chance1 and he wins out or loses1 according to whether fortune is with him or not4 ,women never can understand why their husbands refuse to handle them diplomatically1 when it would be money in their pockets to use the velvet glove instead of the strong-arm method4 ,every man knows that he can jolly his wife into doing anything1 and doing without anything4 ,he knows that if he hands her a few cheap compliments about what a wonderful manager she is and how she helps him1 she will squeeze every nickel4 ,every man knows that if he tells his wife how beautiful and lovely she looks in her last year's dress1 she wouldn't trade it off for the latest ,paris importation4 ,every man knows that he can kiss his wife's eyes shut until she will be blind as a bat1 and that he has only to give her a warm smack on the lips to make her dumb as an oyster4 ,and every wife knows that her husband knows these things about her1 because she has furnished him with a complete diagram about how to work her4 ,and she never knows whether to be mad at him or disgusted with him1 because he would rather fight with her and pay for it in having to eat bad meals1 and having his money wasted and buy her new frocks and limousines and pearls1 than to take the trouble to flatter her a little and treat her the way she is begging to be treated4 ,most of all1 women never can understand why their husbands are so stingy with words1 which surely are among the cheapest commodities on earth4 ,above everything else1 every wife yearns for words of love1 for words of praise from her husband4 ,just to have her husband pet her1 to have him say to her that she grows dearer and dearer to him every day1 and that he thanks ,god for giving her to him1 pays any woman for all the sacrifice1 all the work1 all the suffering that marriage brings her4 ,it makes her heart sing with joy1 and the lack of it fills her life with tears of despair4 ,every man knows this4 ,every man knows that he can make his wife happy with just a few words1 and yet he withholds them4 ,even the men who really love their wives and appreciate all that their wives do for them refuse to give the starving souls the words that would be the bread of life to them4 ,no4 ,no wife ever gets acquainted with her husband4 ,husbands always keep us guessing to the end of the chapter4 ,perhaps that is why we all want one of these living conundrums4 ,,xxxvi ,,the ,,power ,,of ,,suggestion ,among my acquaintances is a woman who has a pretty little flapper daughter4 ,the girl is a good little girl1 as playful and innocent as a kitten4 ,but she bobs her hair1 and paints her face1 and rouges her lips1 and likes to jazz1 and joy-ride1 and have a good time just as thousands of other girls of her age and class are doing4 ,all this greatly outrages the mother1 who tells her daughter that1 in her day1 decent girls didn't paint their faces1 or shimmy1 and that they stayed at home evenings and read good books1 instead of running around with japanned-haired boys4 ,and then she winds up her preachment by accusing her daughter of doing things which she does not do1 and prophesying that she will come to a bad end4 ,of course1 it is mother love and mother anxiety that makes this woman keep continually before the girl's eyes the fate of those who follow the road of pleasure4 ,it never enters her head that she may be precipitating on her child the catastrophe she dreads1 but that is precisely what she is doing4 ,she is making the girl feel that she is sophisticated and worldly-wise--one of the wild1 wild women4 ,she is giving the flavor of forbidden fruit to what would otherwise be harmless little amusements4 ,she is making the girl reckless1 because she is making her believe that she is under suspicion and is being talked about4 ,worst of all1 she is firmly implanting in the girl's mind the idea that she is expected to go wrong4 ,and if anything in the world will put the skids under a girl1 it is for her own mother to be continually impressing upon her that she is a wrong 'un4 ,when you observe the dealings of parents with their children the thing at which you wonder most is that fathers and mothers never seem to realize the power of suggestion4 ,yet it is one of the most potent forces in the world1 and one that can be directed with almost uncanny results to the molding and shaping of the characters of the young4 ,it is hardly too much to say that as the parents think1 so are the children4 ,it is the fixed idea the parents stamp indelibly on the plastic childish mind which determines the fate in life of the man or woman4 ,you can1 for instance1 take a delicate child and literally 8think0 it into health or sickness4 ,if the mother keeps the child forever reminded it can't do what other children do because of its poor heart1 it can't eat this or that because of its bad digestion1 and that it mustn't be crossed because it is so nervous1--that child will grow up into a neurotic invalid4 ,but if the mother impresses on it the thought that it is getting well1 and is going to be strong and healthy1 unless there is something radically organically wrong1 it will overcome the weakness with which it was seemingly threatened4 ,all of us have seen people actually bring upon themselves diseases they believed they had inherited4 ,they had had it impressed on them from their infancy that they were bound to die of consumption because all the ,smiths had tuberculosis4 ,or1 that they were doomed to perish with cancer1 because cancer was in the ,jones family4 ,or1 to have rheumatism because the ,simkins were all rheumatic1 and they died of what they believed to be inherited diseases that science has proved not to be inheritable4 ,it is tragic to think how many parents have killed the children they loved by putting the death thought upon them1 and by making them believe that they were doomed1 and that there was no use in their trying to be strong and well4 ,it is still more tragic to think of the millions of people who are failures in the world because their fathers and mothers have sapped their courage1 and slain their initiative by implanting in their minds the conviction that they were dolts and had not the ability to succeed4 ,once establish the inferiority complex in a child's mind1 and it is done for4 ,it accepts the belief that it has no ability to do things1 and it attempts nothing4 ,it makes no struggle to rise4 ,it slumps into the humble position its parents have assigned it4 ,this is why perpetual fault-finding with a child intensifies its faults4 ,to nag ,johnny continually about his awkwardness1 makes him still more awkward4 ,to be forever calling attention to ,tom's shyness1 makes him shrink more and more out of sight4 ,to fret at ,bob's dulness1 makes him feel that there is no hope for a boy who isn't quick and alert4 ,many men never have the courage to demand their just deserts and take the place to which they are entitled in business and society because they were made self-conscious in their childhood4 ,they had it so impressed on their minds that they were blundering louts1 and stupid fools1 that they shrank within themselves1 and never had the nerve to push their fortunes4 ,and just as you can make a child a failure by holding the thought of its inferiority before it1 you can do much to make it a success by holding the thought of achievement before it4 ,we unconsciously strive to be what the people about us expect of us4 ,if ,jimmie knows that he has a reputation for beautiful manners1 he will act as a gentleman4 ,if ,tom knows you expect him to make a mark at school or in business1 he will try to make good4 ,if ,mary knows you do not think it possible for her to be anything but sweet and innocent1 she is not likely to tarnish your ideal4 ,the power of suggestion is so far reaching in its influence that fathers and mothers should be careful how they use it1 and avoid implanting a weak thought1 an evil thought1 a thought of failure in their children's minds as they would avoid giving them poison4 ,,xxxvii ,,woman',s ,,missionary ,,opportunity ,as a sex women are highly altruistic4 ,there is scarcely a movement in the world for the uplift of humanity or for ameliorating the sorrows of the poor and helpless that does not owe its existence to women4 ,it is women who support the orphan asylums1 the homes for old men and women1 the reformatories1 the houses for the blind1 the places of refuge where the man just out of prison can go and gather himself together before starting out on a better life4 ,it is women who nurse in hospitals1 and who carry on mainly the work of the ,red ,cross and the fight against the great ,white ,plague4 ,joan of ,arc is the great feminine heroine4 ,the women that other women envy most are not the great beauties and sirens of history1 or the famous actors and writers1 but the ,florence ,nightingales and ,frances ,willards who have been able to do some great service to their fellow creatures4 ,and deep down in her secret heart1 if every woman was granted her one great wish1 it would be to be able to help her day and generation to make others happier1 and to perform some miracle that would make life easier for all who come after her4 ,well1 little as she realizes it1 that power is possessed by every woman who has children4 ,in her hands lies the remedy for the greatest sorrow that tears at the hearts of men and women4 ,she can wipe away half of the tears of the world4 ,she has the magic that can change innumerable lives from misery to joy4 ,for the greatest trouble in the world is domestic trouble4 ,the bitterest disappointment is a marriage that is a failure4 ,there is no place of torment so hard to endure as a home of bickering and strife4 ,no enemy can stab you to the heart as does a cold1 selfish1 unkind husband or wife4 ,it lies within the power of mothers to put an end to all this misery1 to stop divorce and the breaking up of homes1 and the orphaning of helpless little children4 ,it is in their power to provide every man and woman with a good husband and wife1 to make every home a prosperous and peaceful one1 and to save other mothers from the agony of seeing their children mistreated by the men and women to whom they are married4 ,there is no more appalling thought than that every woman could raise her children up to be good husbands and wives1 and that she does not do it4 ,on the contrary1 nine times out of ten she brings up her sons and daughters to be exactly the kind of husbands and wives from whom she prays ,god on her knees to deliver her own precious darlings4 ,most likely the woman is herself the victim of another woman's cruelty4 ,her own marriage has been wretched because her husband's mother never taught him to treat women with any courtesy1 or consideration1 or chivalry4 ,he was never brought up to consider a woman's feelings1 or even to extend to her common justice4 ,as a result1 his wife has had to walk on eggs to keep from rousing a demoniacal temper4 ,she has had to wait on him hand and foot4 ,she has had to wheedle every penny out of him1 and never since her wedding day has her husband made one move to entertain or amuse her1 or done anything to make her happy4 ,it would seem that a woman who had been through the arid desert of such a marriage would save some other poor girl from such a fate by raising up her son to be a good husband4 ,you would think that she would teach him what a terrible crime it is to take a woman's life into his hands and break it2 that she would teach him to be gentle and tender to his wife2 that she would impress upon him that a woman earns her share of the family income1 and that it should be given to her outright instead of being doled out as alms4 ,you would think that she would ground him1 from his infancy up1 in the knowledge of all the little things that make a marriage a failure or a success to a woman--the little attentions1 the little treats1 the word of praise1 the compliment on a new dress or hat1 the little things that make a woman's heart sing with joy1 and that makes marriage worth while to her4 ,the great majority of women1 however1 never even so much as think of training their sons to be good husbands4 ,nor do they train their daughters to be good wives4 ,very few mothers would be willing to see their sons marry the kind of girls their daughters are4 ,mother has raised her daughters up to be selfish and spoiled and lazy and extravagant1 and she is ready to foist them without mercy on any poor young fellows who are taken with their pretty faces4 ,but ,heaven defend her own boys from marrying girls who have never considered any other human being in the world but themselves1 and whose only law is their own pleasure6 ,you even hear mothers boast that they have never taught their daughters how to cook1 or sew1 or keep house1 yet the very foundation of domestic happiness and the prosperity of the family depend upon the wife being a thrifty manager and making a comfortable home4 ,nor do women instil into their daughters' minds the truth about marriage--that it is an obligation that they take upon themselves1 and that they have no right to throw it up and quit because it is full of hardships and self-sacrifice instead of being the joy-ride they thought it would be4 ,neither do mothers pass on to their daughters their own hardly won knowledge of how to get along with a husband1 how to bear with him and forbear1 how to jolly him and handle him with tact and diplomacy1 yet that precious bit of information would save many a marriage4 ,believe me that the most important question that any mother can ask herself is this3 8,am ,i raising up my son and daughter to bless or curse the woman and man who marry them80 ,,xxxviii ,,how ,,to ,,be ,a ,,good ,,husband ,a young man said to me the other day3 8,i am going to be married1 and ,i earnestly and honestly desire to make my wife happy1 but beyond a vague and rudimentary impression that ,i must not beat or starve her1 ,i haven't an idea of how to go about the good-husband job4 ,what should a man do to keep a woman blessing her lucky stars that she married him1 instead of wondering what on earth the fool-killer was doing that she survived her wedding day80 8,well1 son10 ,i replied1 8your theoretical ground work for being a good husband is a sound foundation on which to build1 tho refraining from beating your wife is not the matter of course thing that you seem to think it is4 ,there will be plenty of times when you will want to do so1 and bitterly regret that no perfect gentleman can lay his hands upon a woman save in the way of kindness1 no matter how much she needs a thrashing or he yearns to give her one4 8,while as for giving a wife sustenance and raiment1 believe me1 that to be a good provider is one of the brightest jewels in the crown of a good husband4 ,no matter what other charms and virtues a man may have1 he is a poor makeshift of a husband if he cannot give his wife a comfortable living4 ,and1 on the other hand1 no man is a total failure as a husband if he laps his wife in luxuries4 ,jewels1 and motorcars1 and fine houses1 and fine clothes are a consolation prize that takes the curse off many a woman's disappointment in marriage4 8,having1 then1 accorded your wife considerate treatment and given her a good home1 the next step in being a good husband is to play fair with her on the money question4 ,get off on the right foot there and you will save yourself endless bickerings and prevent her from feeling a bitterness toward you that will grow and grow until it will kill out all of her affection for you4 ,the first disillusion that many a bride gets is when she finds out that the prince of her dreams is a tightwad1 who haggles with her over the market money and who is so stingy that he never gives her a penny of her own4 ,there isn't a woman in the world who is enough of a worm of the dust not to resent having to ask her husband for the money she knows she earns as a housewife4 ,so go fifty-fifty with your wife on the money proposition4 ,give her as big an allowance as you can afford and be decent enough not to ask her what she does with it4 8,the next item in being a good husband is to be affectionate to your wife4 ,don't expect her to take it for granted that you still love her because you haven't applied for a divorce from her4 ,you handed her a fine and convincing line of love talk while you were courting her1 and there is no excuse for your cutting it off and becoming as dumb as an oyster just as soon as you've got her4 ,no normal woman can live without love and be happy4 ,it is just as necessary to her well-being as food and drink1 and if she is deprived of it she suffers all of the agonies of soul starvation1 which are worse than those of the body4 ,when you marry a woman you isolate her from the love-making of other men1 and so you are in honor bound to provide her with an ample supply of soft talk yourself4 8,therefore1 make it a rule of your life to give your wife at least one kiss every day that has in it some thrill of love and passion1 and that isn't flavored with ham and eggs like the perfunctory peck on the cheek or the back of the ear which is all most men hand their wives in the osculation line4 ,and1 for heaven's sake1 don't neglect to pay your wife compliments4 ,when she has on a new dress tell her how pretty she looks and how becoming it is1 instead of grunting or demanding to know how much it costs4 ,if you have eyes enough to see other women's pretty clothes and intelligence enough to say the right things about them1 why not about your wife's1 when it will please her to death and make her think what a wonderful man she has married8 8,the next point in being a good husband consists in doing something actively to make your wife happy and showing a human interest in her4 ,many men think they have done their whole duty as husbands when they furnish their wives with food and shelter and plenty of money4 ,i have heard men excuse themselves for never remembering an anniversary or giving their wives a little present by saying that they didn't know what ,mary or ,sally wanted1 and that they had charge accounts at the best jewelers and department stores and could buy themselves whatever they wanted4 8,that kind of thing doesn't make a woman happy4 ,there isn't a wife in the world who wouldn't get more thrill out of a dollar string of blue beads that her husband bought because they matched her eyes than she would out of a pearl necklace that she bought herself on her wedding anniversary because her husband had forgotten they were ever married4 ,it is the personal touch that counts with women4 ,the sentiment4 ,the knowledge that her husband is concerned about her1 that he notices when she is tired1 that he appreciates all that she does1 that he tries to make her happy and wants to give her every pleasure that he can4 8,if you want to be a good husband1 son1 remember to do the little things1 and the big things will do themselves4 ,be affectionate1 be kind1 be appreciative1 jolly her instead of finding fault with her4 ,be liberal in the use of flattery and take her to some place of amusement at least once a week1 and she will thank ,god on her knees for having given you to her for a husband40 ,,xxxix ,,giving ,,children ,,advantages ,among my acquaintances is a woman who is always bemoaning the fact that she cannot give her children 8advantages40 ,she sheds barrels of tears over their not having the 8advantages0 that the children of the rich have4 ,she beats upon her breast and laments that she cannot send her boys to college1 and give them high-powered motorcars1 and when she thinks of not being able to dress her daughters like fashion plates and send them off to summer and winter resorts1 she melts down into a perfect pulp of self-pity4 ,after listening to this wail for a number of years1 ,i grew exasperated1 and said to her3 8,what are the advantages that you cannot give your children8 ,let us sit down and consider them dispassionately1 and see if your children really are so unfortunate1 and so handicapped in life as you think they are4 ,let us begin with your not being able to send your boys off to college4 ,i grant you that we would all like to give our children every possible opportunity to acquire a good education4 ,but not all knowledge comes put up in school-book packages4 ,furthermore1 the degree a man takes who graduates from the ,university of ,hard ,knocks has a lot of practical1 available information1 and a working knowledge of life that is worth a bushel of ,m4,a4's and ,ph4,d4's1 and that it will take the college graduate ten or fifteen years to acquire4 ,many of the best-informed1 best-read men that ,i know never saw the inside of a college4 ,in these days of cheap books1 and magazines1 and newspapers1 if a man wants an education he will get it4 8,nor is the lack of a college education any bar to success4 ,the men who are running things in ,america to-day spent their formative years1 from #ah to #bd1 in learning about mines1 and railroads1 and stores1 and banking1 instead of being grounded in ,greek and ,latin4 ,and they are hiring college graduates to work for them4 ,moreover1 while you can lead a boy to the ,pierian spring1 you cannot make him drink from it1 and you know well enough that the great majority of boys who are sent off to college idle away their time1 and come back with nothing but a college yell1 the latest thing in ,klassy ,kut ,kollege ,klothes1 and a maddening air of superiority4 ,so comfort yourself with the knowledge that if your son has it in him to take an education he will get it4 ,if he yearns for culture he will acquire it1 but if he is just a boy who has good hard horse sense1 and is not intellectual1 the sooner he gets to work after his high-school days the better for him4 ,of course1 mother-like1 you want your children to have everything that multimillionaires have1 but in your heart you must know that money is a curse to a boy instead of a blessing4 ,to begin with1 wealth paralyzes ambition4 ,we are all poor1 weak creatures who take the line of least resistance1 and when we don't have to do things we become slackers4 ,we have to have necessity to spur us on to achievement4 8,call over the roll of the rich men of to-day1 of the men who sit in high places1 from the ,president down1 of the men who are famous inventors1 and writers1 and artists4 ,they were almost all poor boys4 ,there is scarcely the name of a millionaire's son in the whole list4 ,and riches lead a boy into temptation from which the poor boy is safe4 ,the boy who has to work for his daily bread has his mind and his hands occupied4 ,he has something interesting and exciting always to do4 ,the idle rich boy must make his own diversions1 and find some way of killing time1 and he does it only too often by the booze and the gambling route1 and in the company of wild women4 ,for adventuresses and grafters fasten themselves like leeches on the man with a fat pocketbook4 ,there is nothing like lacking the price as a first aid to virtue4 8,as for not being able to give your girls advantages1 do you really think it is any advantage to a girl to be brought up to be nothing but a fashion plate1 to have no duties and responsibilities1 to have no object in life except amusing herself and to be taught merely to be a waster and a spender8 ,do you think that the woman who has a dozen homes in this country and ,europe1 between which she vibrates with no more local attachments than a transient guest has in a hotel1 gets the pleasure out of them that the woman does out of her little bungalow1 whose every plank has been paid for by some sacrifice and where every chair and plate is the result of weeks of saving and planning8 ,do you think the girl who buys herself a ,european title is as happy with the rou husband she has purchased as the girl who marries some clean1 honest young chap she loves and works up with him to prosperity8 ,do you think that the woman who bears children and then turns them over to nurses and governesses gets the benediction out of motherhood that the woman does who cradles her children on her breast and rears them up at her knee8 8,you lament that you cannot give your daughters the chance to make fine marriages4 ,why1 the working girl has ten times as good chance to make a good marriage as the society girl has1 because she is thrown with more men4 ,she works side by side with the go-getters and the coming men1 and she has the pick of them all4 ,so10 ,i said to my lachrymose friend1 8stop whining because you aren't rich and can't give your children #8advantages4' ,you are giving them the necessity of standing on their own feet and fighting their own battles1 of developing all that is best in them1 and that is the greatest advantage that you could possibly give them40 ,,xl ,,sell ,,yourself ,,to ,,your ,,children ,did you ever contemplate trying to 8sell0 your children1 as the advertising experts say1 the things you wish them to be and do8 ,did you ever try selling them yourself8 ,of course1 the old idea is that the proper way to rear children is by forcing on them a system of do's and don'ts4 ,we tell our children that they must do this1 and they mustn't do that4 ,we try to coerce them along the straight and narrow road because that is the proper path for them to travel1 but we never take the trouble to artfully entice them into it and make them think that they have chosen it of their own free wills4 ,we want our children to love us1 to admire us1 to consider us their best friends2 but we expect them to do this because we believe it the duty of children to honor their parents4 ,not ten fathers and mothers in a thousand ever deliberately try to make themselves attractive to their children or win their confidence4 ,perhaps this is why there are so many boys and girls hurtling down the broad highway to destruction2 why parental influence amounts to so little1 and why the average child feels that it has less in common with its own father and mother than it has with any other man and woman it knows4 ,we have just begun to realize that propaganda is one of the greatest and most insidious forces on earth4 ,we have seen it lift men up to the skies and make gods of them1 then turn and pull them down1 and trample them into the dust4 ,we have seen it exalt a nation into sainthood and turn it into a howling mob1 crying for blood4 ,and if it can thus sway and move grown-up people1 what a weapon it is to use upon the plastic mind of a child6 ,this being the case1 why should we not 8sell0 our children the ideals we wish them to have8 ,why should we not feed them on the right propaganda from their cradle up8 ,why should we not advertise the good things of life until we make them so alluring that the child will want them8 ,why should we not sell righteousness to our children8 ,it is one thing to preach and nag at them about drink1 and gambling1 and associating with bad men and women until you bore them to tears and make them wonder what is the fascination of the evil that they are so warned against4 ,and it is another thing to make clean living the symbol of health1 and strength1 and length of days2 the respect of one's fellow men and1 above all1 the thing that sets one right with one's own soul4 ,why not sell our children education8 ,we scourge them to school1 which most of them regard as a place of penance1 and where1 dull and bored1 they sit in stolid indifference1 while the dull and bored teachers go through the perfunctory routine of hearing them recite lessons in which they do not pretend to take the slightest interest4 ,but suppose we could really sell these children the idea of education8 ,suppose we could get them as interested in history as they are in stories of adventure8 ,suppose we could make them see that spelling and arithmetic are not tasks2 that they are the tools with which they will work when they get their first jobs as stenographers and bookkeepers1 and that the better they spell and the quicker they are at figures the bigger their pay envelopes will be6 ,suppose we could make them see that knowledge is power1 and that whether they stay at the foot of the ladder or climb to the top is going to depend on how well their brains are trained6 ,why1 if we could make children see the advantages of an education we would not have to force them to go to school4 ,they would be eager and anxious to go4 ,suppose we sold our children good manners4 ,we are always correcting ,johnny at the table about the way he eats1 and he is so used to our don'ts about walking in front of people and keeping his hat on that he has long since ceased to listen when we speak4 ,but suppose1 from his earliest infancy1 ,johnny had heard boors ridiculed1 and knife swallowers1 and cup cuddlers1 and audible soup-eaters held up to scorn as figures of fun4 ,do you not know that ,johnny would as soon think of committing murder as one of these offenses8 ,and suppose ,johnny has had it impressed on him by precept and example that good manners are a letter of credit that is honored the world over2 that they will take you farther than anything else on earth4 ,don't you know that ,johnny would be incapable of loutishness1 because good manners had simply been bred into him8 ,why should we not sell our children industry and thrift8 ,propaganda again4 ,you can make work the most thrilling of all games4 ,you can make a child feel that his job is of great importance4 ,you can form in childhood an unbreakable habit of industry4 ,you can teach the child how to deny itself little things in order to save the money for big things4 ,you can make it feel the independence of having its own little bank account4 ,you can set a goal before it and light the fires of ambition in its soul4 ,finally1 why not sell yourself to your children8 ,why not make as much effort to ingratiate yourself with your children as you would with a stranger8 ,why not try to impress your children with your ability1 your wisdom1 your up-to-dateness1 as you would any man or woman with whom you are trying to do business8 ,if parents could only convince their children that they are not back-numbers and incarnate killjoys it would do more than any other one thing to improve the family relationship4 ,believe me1 it pays to advertise--especially with your children4 ,,xli ,,taking ,,husbands 8,,as ,,is0 ,i wish that ,i could make every young girl who gets married a present of a handsomely framed motto to hang on the wall above the mirror of her dressing table1 where she would be compelled to see it every time she put on or took off her complexion1 or repaired the ,cupid's bow of her lips4 ,on this motto in gorgeously illumined letters would be these sapient words of ,grover ,cleveland3 8,it is a condition and not a theory that confronts you40 ,i can think of no other advice in the world that would be such a lamp to guide the feet of any young woman who is starting to blunder down the rough road of matrimony1 as this cold1 hard1 unimaginative assertion of a simple fact4 ,it brushes away with one gesture of common sense all the dreams and romances and fairy tales of courtship1 and leaves a woman facing the reality of matrimony1 which is never as she thought it would be4 ,it just is as it is4 ,if women would only abandon their theories about what matrimony should be1 and how husbands should act1 and deal with them as they are1 it would save floods of tears1 innumerable broken hearts1 hundreds of cases of nervous prostration1 and put the divorce courts out of business4 ,furthermore1 that women are mostly right in their contentions1 and have logic and justice on their side1 doesn't alter this aspect of the situation at all4 ,for instance1 woman's perpetual grievance against her husband is his indifference4 ,she wails out that he inveigled her into matrimony under false pretenses because from the ardor with which he wooed her1 he led her to believe and expect that he would be an eternal lover and would spend a large part of his time telling her how beautiful and wonderful she was1 and how he adored her4 ,instead of making good on this antenuptial propaganda1 however1 he stopped all of his love-making at the altar with a suddenness that jarred her wisdom teeth loose1 and in place of being a ladylove1 she finds herself merely a household convenience4 ,millions of women make themselves miserable because their husbands never make love to them1 never pay them a compliment1 never give them any sign of appreciation1 never take them to any place of amusement1 never give any indication that they still care for them and want them to be happy4 ,these suffering sisters could save themselves nearly all of their woe if they would just throw their rosy dreams of how a husband should treat a wife into the discard1 and accept the truth that very few men are sentimentalists4 ,most of them feel like fools when they are love-making1 and so they get the ordeal over with as quickly as possible4 ,they consider that when a man marries a woman1 and undertakes her board bill and shopping ticket1 that he has given a proof of devotion strong enough to draw money on at the bank1 and there is no use in saying anything more about it4 ,also they feel that the fact that they selected the women they did for wives showed that they admired them above all other women1 so why harp on that string8 ,and1 of course1 they want their wives to be happy4 ,what else do they toil for except to doll their wives up1 and give them cars and houses and trips to ,palm ,beach8 ,so the wife may be very happy and contented who has philosophy enough to take her husband as he is1 good1 kind and generous1 even if he is a dumb lover1 apparently more interested in his business than he is in her4 ,she realizes that he says it with checks instead of with flowery phrases1 and that if she is starved emotionally she is sure of her daily roast beef and potatoes4 ,then there is the matter of adjustment between a man and a woman4 ,every bride dreams an impossible dream of a husband who is chilled steel to all the balance of the world1 but putty in her hands4 ,experience blows this fair dream to the ends of the earth1 and she finds that she can no more alter her husband's habits and prejudices than she can the laws of the ,medes and the ,persians4 ,he has his ways1 and she can either give in to them or fight over them4 ,he has his set opinions1 and she can sidestep them or fight with him about them4 ,she can either use tact and diplomacy in handling him1 or else be in a perpetual quarrel with him1 and she protests that this isn't fair or just4 ,she says that it is as much his place to give in to her as it is hers to give in to him4 ,that it is just as much his business to deal subtly with her1 as it is her business to deal subtly with him4 ,of course1 the woman is right1 but being right doesn't help her a bit in getting along with her husband4 ,it is a condition and not a theory that confronts her4 ,if any harmonious relations exist between her and her husband1 she has to furnish the harmony4 ,if there is any adapting1 it is the wife who must do the adapting4 ,women likewise complain that it is unjust that they should have to do practically all of the work of making a happy home4 ,they say that it is just as much a man's business to be a little ray of sunshine in the home as it is a woman's2 that it is just as much up to a husband to wear the smile that won't come off as it is the wife's4 ,they say that there is no more reason why they should read up on subjects that interest their husbands1 so as to be able to hand out a good line of conversation1 than why their husbands shouldn't read up on fashion journals so as to be able to discuss intelligently with them the length of skirts and the latest hair bob4 ,true4 ,but again it is the condition and not the theory of matrimony that confronts them1 and unless the wife makes the happy home it isn't made4 ,it is when women forget what matrimony should be1 and deal with it as it is1 that they make a success of it4 ,,xlii ,,being ,a ,,good ,,wife 8,i want to be a good wife1 the kind of a wife like that lady in the ,bible whose price was above rubies10 said a little bride to me the other day4 8,what shall ,i do to be a real helpmeet to my husband80 8,well1 my dear10 ,i replied1 8there are three general counts on which every wife must make good in order to help her husband1 and then the job becomes the work of an expert1 and varies according to the temperament of the man4 ,to begin with1 every woman who is an asset instead of a total loss to her husband1 must make him a comfortable home and feed him properly4 ,when a man marries1 he practically turns over his stomach and his nerves and his brains to his wife's care1 and she can keep him at the peak of efficiency by giving him a quiet1 restful place to come to at night1 and a good dinner to eat1 or she can sabotage the whole works by throwing in quarrels and heavy biscuit and tough meat4 8,there is practically no limit to the amount of work a man can do whose wife takes care of him1 and who has a happy home life4 ,the men who break down with nervous prostration are the men who1 after the struggle and anxiety and worries of a business day1 go home to strife and wrangles and recriminations and nagging and to food that would kill an ostrich4 ,no nerves and no digestion will stand it4 ,a breakfast of flabby cakes and muddy coffee1 that make him take a dyspeptic and despairing view of things1 and see the world through blue spectacles1 has made many a man turn down a good proposition that would have carried him on to fame and fortune4 ,a spat with his wife that left his nerves on edge1 and his soul filled with bitterness1 has made many a man quarrel with his partner and insult his best client or customer4 8,so1 my dear1 if you want to help your husband succeed1 you must begin by making him a home wherein his tired body and frazzled nerves may refresh themselves1 so that he may go forth with new strength to battle with the world4 ,you must make him happy1 for there is nothing that happy people may not achieve4 ,the next item is to keep on cutting bait4 ,don't deceive yourself into thinking that because you have captured your man he will stay captive4 ,it is a job that has to be done over again every morning4 8,you know the arts and wiles with which you lured him into matrimony4 ,you recall the pretty dresses you wore1 the glad1 sweet smile with which you met him4 ,the pleasure you showed you took in his society4 ,a man doesn't put on blinders when he gets married4 ,he still has an eye out for a pretty woman in a gay frock1 and he likes to feel that his wife still cares enough for him to want to make herself attractive to him and that his coming home is the big event of the day to her4 8,item three in being a good wife is to be a loving wife4 ,women are always talking about being heart-hungry and seem to think that it is an exclusively feminine complaint1 but there are just as many men starving for affection as there are women4 ,don't expect your husband to take it for granted that you still love him because you haven't applied for a divorce4 ,tell him so4 ,give him a kiss now and then that isn't just a peck on the cheek4 ,but love with discretion4 ,don't smother your husband with affection4 ,don't surfeit him on it4 ,keep your love as a sweetener for matrimony4 ,don't make it the whole diet4 ,remember that the most-loved husband in the world said3 #8,feed me with apples1 stay me with flagons1 for ,i am ,,sick of love4' 8,the fourth item in being a good wife is not to expect the impossible of your husband4 ,don't demand that he be a demigod4 ,accept him as a poor1 faulty human being1 even as you are4 ,don't have hysterics every time he topples off of the pedestal on which you have placed him4 ,help him up1 dust him off and give him a seat beside you4 ,humor him in his funny little ways4 ,sidestep his little prejudices4 ,don't argue with him when your opinions clash4 ,laugh at his blunders and sympathize with him when he makes mistakes1 and he will make you his confidant and tell you the truth1 which is the finest tribute that any man ever pays his wife4 8,item five in being a good wife is to be appreciative4 ,when the average man gets married he sells himself into bondage to his family4 ,the remainder of his life he spends toiling to keep his wife and children soft and safe4 ,and whether all this work and sacrifice is worth the price and is a glorious reward depends altogether on his wife's attitude4 ,if she takes it as nothing but her due1 it is slavery4 ,but if she lets him see every day in every way that she thinks that he is the finest and noblest man that ever lived1 and that no be-medaled warrior has anything on him in heroism1 it makes it all worth while and causes him to feel that being a husband and father is the finest career on earth4 8,item six in being a good wife is to keep yourself good-natured4 ,tho you have all other virtues1 yet are a high-tempered virago or a nagger1 you will be a failure as a wife and your husband will curse the day he married you4 8,item seven is to be a good sport4 ,to take the bad with the good of matrimony without whining4 ,not to welch on your part of the work and sacrifices4 ,to be willing to go where your husband's fortunes call him4 ,to fight the battle with him shoulder to shoulder and never to give up the ship4 8,the next way to help your husband is by keeping yourself cheerful and optimistic4 ,nothing breaks down a man's morale so quickly as having a wife who is whining and complaining1 who reproaches him with not making as much money as other men do1 and who lets him see that she does not believe in him4 ,now we can only do the things we think we can do1 and when we kill a man's faith in himself we have slain his ability to succeed4 ,ninety-nine husbands out of a hundred live up to their wives' expectations of them4 ,if their wives are always knocking them and discouraging them and wet-blanketing their every plan and prophesying failure1 they fail4 ,but if their wives are cheerful and optimistic2 if they encourage them2 if they believe in them1 and make them believe in themselves1 they succeed4 ,they simply have to make good because their wives expect it4 ,most wives write their husbands' price tags4 ,price yours high1 and your husband will deliver the goods4 8,the next point in being a good wife is for the wife deliberately to make herself her husband's best friend4 ,that means that you must interest yourself in whatever interests him4 ,first and foremost1 you must take an interest in his business4 ,practically all men like to talk shop1 but they can't do it to women who yawn in their faces and who never take the trouble to learn the technique of the business out of which they get their living4 ,a woman can help her husband not only by taking an interest in his business1 but by making friends for him4 ,many a man is advertised into success by his charming wife1 and many a man is bankrupted by his disagreeable and ill-mannered spouse4 ,a woman can help her husband by using a little common sense in her attitude toward his business1 and by being willing to make the sacrifices necessary to his success4 8,the woman who always speaks of her husband's office as #8that old office1' and who resents his interest in his business and the time he devotes to it2 the woman who will not let her husband leave a poor job with no future to it1 to take a better one in which he could make his fortune1 because it would take her away from mother and the girls and ,main ,street2 the doctors' and dentists' wives who are jealous of their husbands' patients1 and the lawyer's wife who blabs1 are all first aids to their husbands' failure4 ,only a man of superhuman talent can succeed against the handicap of such a wife4 8,then come the two specific ways in which a wife can help her husband1 and which depend on the individual man4 ,some men have talent1 but lack backbone4 ,they are brilliant but weak4 ,they get easily discouraged and need to be bucked up and flattered and admired continually4 ,they are prone to give up1 and they need a wife who will hold them to their purpose when they falter and waver4 ,a wife can help this type of man best by being a little hard and very ambitious1 by bracing him up with her own strength and literally pushing him on to success4 ,the clinging vine1 helpless sort of women bring out the best that is in other men4 ,if their wives could stand on their own feet1 their husbands would let them do it1 but because their wives can do nothing but hang around their necks1 they feel that they must fight to the death for them4 8,this is the reason that for the wife to be thrifty and saving is not always the best way to help a man4 ,because many a man has had to hustle to meet the demands of an extravagant wife he has made the effort that turned him into a millionaire4 8,but mostly1 my dear1 if you want to help your husband1 just love him enough4 ,perhaps that is the best way of all40 ,,xliii ,,invalidism ,a ,,graft ,do you ever think that it is dishonest to be sick when you might be well8 ,it is just plain stealing4 ,and it is the most despicable form of petty larceny1 because it is robbing those who love you1 and trust you and who are defenseless against you4 ,they cannot lock up their sympathies1 their peace of mind1 their personal service1 their money1 safely away from your pilfering4 ,of course1 there are many people who are really ill4 ,through no fault of their own1 they are smitten by some terrible disease1 and they deserve all that we can give of pity and help as they go stumbling down the agonized way to the grave4 ,these words are not for them1 but for that multitude of men and women with whom sickness is merely a graft1 a camouflage for selfishness1 and a blanket excuse with which they cover up all their sins of omission and commission1 and that furnishes them a perfect alibi for doing everything they want to do1 and leaving undone those things which they do not wish to do4 ,ninety per cent of all the sickness in the world is voluntary1 or at least comes through contributory negligence4 ,people are sick because they are not willing to make the sacrifices to keep well4 ,and curiously enough they justify themselves by claiming that their own health is a personal matter4 8,if ,i make myself sick1 ,i am the one who has to suffer10 they say4 ,if this were true1 far be it from the rest of us to interfere with their pleasures4 ,but it isn't true4 ,no man or woman is sick to himself or herself alone4 ,we have to listen to their groans4 ,we have to minister to them4 ,we have to do their work4 ,we have to pay their doctor's bills4 ,we have to put up with their irritability and unreason because sickness is supposed to give people carte blanche to do and say all the things that well people do not dare to do4 ,when ill health is an act of ,god1 as shipping manifests say1 and therefore beyond our control1 it is one thing4 ,when it is the result of weak self-indulgence it is another thing4 ,our sympathies and our assistance go out to the victim of tuberculosis or cancer1 but we have nothing but contempt for the glutton who keeps himself sick from overeating4 ,in every business house where women are employed there is such a large percentage of them absent from work on account of sickness1 especially during the winter1 that the question is often raised whether the delicate feminine constitution can stand the strain of commercial life4 ,stuff and nonsense6 ,it isn't the work that is hurting the girls4 ,it is the way they dress and live4 ,they feel that they have a perfect right to risk bad colds and pneumonia by coming to work on rainy1 sloppy1 sleety days in paper-soled satin pumps and chiffon stockings1 and with not enough clothes on to keep an icicle warm4 ,they consider it their own affair if they prefer to spend their money on an imported hat instead of on nourishing food4 ,they think if they come to the office with a nervous headache that makes them blind and stupid with pain1 and was brought on by too many nights of successive jazzing1 it is a matter between them and the aspirin bottle alone4 ,but it isn't4 ,they are not giving their employers a square deal4 ,they are not giving them the services they pay for4 ,they are upsetting the routine of the office1 and laying the burden of their work on the shoulders of other people4 ,look at the invalid wives you know6 ,dozens of them who have brought nervous prostration on themselves by overwork1 or too many clubs and causes1 or too much society4 ,don't we all know women who go on orgies of housecleaning1 or dressmaking1 though they know perfectly well that every such debauch is going to end up in a spell of sickness which will call for doctors and trained nurses8 ,don't we know women who wear themselves to tatters over church fairs and club campaigns8 ,don't we know women who play bridge every day until they are so nervous that they become unbearable at home and their husbands have to send them off to sanatoriums to get a little peace and rest themselves8 ,we do4 ,we marvel that these women never stop to consider how they are defrauding their families4 ,they never consider what a wickedly dishonest thing it is to deprive a husband and children of a healthy1 strong wife and mother1 and give them a neurotic1 irritable1 cross1 nerve-wrecked creature who makes the home about as cheerful as a grave-yard1 and in which they have always to walk softly and speak in whispers for fear of disturbing the lady who has just gone to bed with a neuralgia headache4 ,then there is the large army of women who enjoy poor health1 who are professional invalids for the simple reason that they are too lazy and indolent to make the effort to be well4 ,they are quitters who literally take life lying down4 ,they cultivate small ailments4 ,they acquire the sanatorium habit1 and they expect to be pitied and babied instead of being ostracized as dishonest grafters who snatch the very bread out of the mouths of their families to pay their unnecessary doctor's bills4 ,we all know dozens of these women who suffer from imaginary complaints1 and we have seen many of them cured by their husband's death1 when they had to quit being sick1 and go to work and support themselves4 ,that is why ,i say that it is dishonest to be sick when you might be well4 ,,xliv ,,selfishness ,,made ,,to ,,order 8,my daughter is so selfish toward me10 wailed a mother to me the other day1 8she never considers my comfort or happiness in any way whatever4 ,since the day she was born ,i have never had a thought except for her4 ,i have given her the best of everything4 ,i have worn old clothes in order that she might have fine new ones4 ,i have done without the things ,i wanted that she might indulge her every desire4 ,i have gone to the places that she wished to go to1 instead of the places where ,i wished to go4 ,i have cooked and sewed and waited upon her like a slave1 but instead of appreciating all that ,i have done for her she takes it as a matter of course4 ,she thinks any old cast-off is good enough for mother and never dreams of doing anything she doesn't want to do for my pleasure4 ,and that is my reward for all the sacrifices ,i have made for her60 8,say rather that1 as the result of all the sacrifices that you have made for your daughter10 ,i replied1 8your girl is just exactly what you have made her4 ,you have put in twenty-two years of conscientious work in erecting a monument of selfishness1 and you have no right to complain4 ,you wouldn't build a house of mud and garbage cans and expect it to be a white marble palace4 ,how1 then1 can you expect to build up a child's character with all the meanest characteristics of human nature and expect it to be fine and noble8 ,impossible4 ,and that is the sort of miracle that you parents expect from your children when you demand that they shall be something totally different from the thing into which you have made them4 8,when your daughter was born1 she was as plastic as clay in your hands4 ,it was your privilege to mold her into any shape you pleased4 ,you could have taught her to be unselfish1 to be considerate1 to think of other people1 to love and honor and respect you4 ,instead of that1 from her first conscious moment1 you taught her to despise you1 to think you of no account and not worth considering4 ,you taught her to think only of herself1 of her own pleasures and desires1 and to get what she wanted at any cost to others4 ,now you whine because your teaching has borne fruit4 ,you are unjust and unreasonable4 ,what we sow1 we reap inevitably4 ,if you make yourself a doormat before your children1 they will walk over you and kick you about1 because they naturally think that you know where you belong in the household and have taken your proper place4 8,they would just as naturally have looked up to you if you had placed yourself on a pedestal above them and demanded to be worshiped4 ,children don't reason about their parents4 ,they just accept them as they are and hold them cheap1 or dear1 according to the way the mother and father value themselves4 ,i have no tears to shed over the sorrows of mothers who have selfish and ungrateful daughters1 because every time it is the mother's own fault4 ,she is to blame1 not the girl4 8,if she had spent part of the clothes money on getting herself some pretty frocks1 instead of lavishing it all on daughter1 daughter would be proud of mother instead of being ashamed of her4 ,if she had made daughter help with the housework and the sewing1 instead of slaving over the cookstove and the sewing machine so that daughter might go free1 daughter would think about saving mother and doing things for her4 ,if she had asserted her rights to her own personal tastes and pleasures1 instead of letting daughter's tastes and pleasures rule the household1 daughter would show her some consideration and remember mother's likes and dislikes1 and cater to them4 ,there are mothers who are queens in their families1 just as there are mothers who are nothing but the maid-of-all-work in their homes1 and it rests with every mother to decide which she will be4 ,it is the queen mothers who are loved and appreciated1 and who have dutiful1 unselfish children4 ,the drudge mother gets only the wages of the drudge from her children4 8,in reality1 the mother who rears her children up to be monsters of selfishness has no right to expect appreciation and gratitude from them because she has done them as ill a turn as one human being can do another4 ,she has warped their characters4 ,she has developed in them traits that mar their happiness and are a handicap to success4 ,she has made them egotists1 and they are never satisfied and continually at variance with those about them4 ,in particular is selfishness a blight upon a woman's life1 for the selfish woman finds it almost impossible to make the sacrifices that wifehood and motherhood demand of her4 ,one of the main reasons why divorce is so prevalent is because when so many selfish girls find that they can't treat their husbands as they did their mothers1 they throw up their hands and quit4 8,and so10 ,i said to the mother of the selfish daughter1 8you are unfair to your daughter4 ,don't blame her for being what you made her4 ,what else could you expect80 ,,xlv ,,self-,,control ,if ,i were to go to a mother who was cradling her babe on her breast1 and tell her that ,i knew a magic formula by which she could insure power1 and prosperity1 and happiness to her child1 she would impoverish herself to purchase this knowledge from me1 and fall on her knees and bless me for having given it to her4 ,yet ,i know just such a bit of white magic4 ,in her secret soul every mother herself knows it1 but ninety-nine times out of a hundred she is either too weak or too lazy to use it4 ,this charm that would have changed all life for innumerable people2 that would have kept men out of prisons1 and women out of brothels2 that would have turned paupers into rich men2 made the unsuccessful successful and stopped the wheels of the divorce court--consists simply in teaching children self-control4 ,almost every misfortune under which humanity suffers goes straight back to that4 ,there is hardly a derelict in the world who cannot say3 8,i would not be what ,i am if my mother had taught me to control myself40 ,for it is lack of self-control that is at the bottom of most of our sins of omission and commission4 ,look at the murderer going to the death chair4 ,not once in a thousand times is he a cold-blooded murderer2 but he was a high-tempered child whose mother never taught him to control himself4 ,there came a day when something irritated him more than usual and1 aflame with anger1 he took a fellow creature's life4 ,it is the supreme manifestation of the same spirit that made him kick the chair against which he stumbled as a child and beat with impotent little fists all who thwarted him4 ,look at the drunkard wallowing in the gutter4 ,he is there because his mother never taught him to control his appetites4 ,he is the logical outgrowth of the greedy little boy who was permitted to gorge himself on cake and candy until it made him ill4 ,look at the poor1 shabby1 out-at-elbows man who has drifted from job to job all his life1 and has never been able to make a decent support for himself and his family4 ,he is his mother's handiwork4 ,she put the curse of incompetence on him when she let him give up every undertaking the moment he struck the hard sledding in it4 ,he changed from one school to another because the lessons were too difficult1 or the teacher was too strict4 ,when he started to work1 he left one place because the hours were too long1 another because his boss was too exacting4 ,he tried a dozen different occupations that he left because he found they had unpleasant features and involved doing uncongenial tasks4 ,he is a down-and-outer because his mother never taught him the self-control that makes a man set his teeth and go through with the business to which he has put his hand4 ,look at the girls who go astray4 ,not one of 8the sorrowful sisterhood0 as the ,japanese pitifully call them1 but who is what she is because her mother did not teach her self-control4 ,did the girl sin because she was so weak and so in love with some vicious libertine that she listened to her heart instead of her head8 ,her mother could have saved her from a fate worse than death if she had taught her to control her emotions1 instead of being ruled by them4 ,did the girl sell her soul for fine clothes1 and good times8 ,again the mother's fault for not teaching the girl self-control1 and to do without the things that she could not honestly get4 ,look at the poor old people who are dependent on their children1 or the grudging charity of relatives and friends4 ,in how many cases is their unhappy fate simply the result of their lack of self-control6 ,they have had their chance of fortune4 ,as long as the man was able to work he made plenty of money1 and they lived luxuriously1 but they spent everything as they went along4 ,they laid up nothing for their rainy day1 and when it came1 it found them paupers and parasites4 ,the difference between dependence and independence1 between comfort and misery in your old age depends upon how much self-control you have had in your youth4 ,look at the ever increasing number of divorces4 ,look at the forlorn half-orphan children1 and broken up homes4 ,look at the unhappy married couples you know4 ,what is the real cause of all this domestic trouble8 ,merely that mothers do not teach their children self-control4 ,they raise up spoiled1 selfish daughters who never consider a thing in life but their own pleasure4 ,they raised up spoiled1 selfish sons who have never considered another human being but themselves4 ,these two1 with undisciplined wills1 unrestrained tempers1 undirected impulses1 marry each other1 and they fight like cats and dogs4 ,observation shows that either a husband or a wife who controls himself or herself can save almost any marriage1 and it takes no prophet to foretell that mothers could insure their children's domestic happiness by teaching them iron bound self-control4 ,you can teach a baby three weeks old self-control by refusing to give it the thing it howls for4 ,say to the toddler that falls and bumps its nose1 8,mother's brave boy doesn't cry10 and it will bite back the sobs4 ,it will yell the roof off if you pity it4 ,a child of three will be obedient1 cheerful1 respectful of the rights of others1 or he will be a little demon1 according to the way his mother has brought him up4 ,if she has taught him self-control1 she has given him the magic that works all the miracles of life1 and if she hasn't1 she has done him the greatest wrong that any human being can possibly do to another human being4 ,,xlvi ,,old ,,fathers ,,and ,,new ,,daughters 8,o dear ,miss ,dix10 wails a little flapper1 8won't you please help me8 ,won't you please try to make my father understand that ,i must do as people do now1 instead of doing the way that he did when he was young8 ,i've got the best daddy in the world1 and ,i love him with all my heart2 but he is ruining my life trying to make me the sort of girl that he says mother was4 ,and ,i'm not mother4 ,i am myself1 and ,i don't live thirty years ago4 ,i live now1 and ,i have to be a model girl of now or else a back-number at whom nobody will look and whom nobody wants4 ,father says he is an old-fashioned father1 and he is trying to make me an old-fashioned girl4 ,i never have any up-to-the-minute clothes because mother didn't wear short skirts and no corsets and bob her hair4 ,i can't go joy-riding with a crowd because they didn't have automobiles when father was young4 ,i have to be home at #aa o'clock when ,i go out in the evening because he says that he never stayed out late when he was young4 8,i can't dance because father didn't jazz and he doesn't think the modern dances respectable4 ,he won't let me read any of the six best sellers because he doesn't approve of modern literature1 and he makes me read old-fashioned books that ,i almost yawn my head off over4 ,and he just simply loathes all the boys who come to see me4 ,calls them sapheads1 and he wonders why ,i want to waste my time talking nonsense with little jellybeans such as they are4 ,he says it is just appalling to see how youth has deteriorated since his day1 and that when he was young the boys and girls were all serious-minded young people1 who cared only for rational amusements1 and that instead of chasing around to cabarets they spent the evening at home in intelligent conversation4 8,i suppose we young ones are a poor lot compared to what our parents were2 but such as we are1 we are4 ,in ,rome you have to do as the ,romans do or else you get left4 ,i want to play with the other girls and boys1 but ,i can't unless ,i play the way they do4 ,my father is always talking about home being woman's proper sphere1 and wifehood and motherhood being a woman's noblest career4 ,but how am ,i to get married if ,i am never permitted to have any dates with boys8 ,you might just as well lock a girl up in a stone cell and throw away the key as not to let her do what the other girls are doing4 ,there are too many pretty girls1 with lots of fun and pep in them1 that the boys can run around with1 for them to take the trouble to hunt up one that is laid up on the shelf and labeled #8old-fashioned4' ,and when ,i tell my father this he gets angry and ,i cry1 and ,i don't know what to do because ,i don't want to disobey him and ,i don't want to waste my youth sticking around at home and having no pleasure40 8,alas1 my dear10 ,i said1 8your father is trying to foist his ideals on you1 just as his father tried to foist his ideals on him4 ,each generation tries to do it and each makes dark prophecies about what the present generation is coming to4 ,your grandfather thought bustles just as dreadful as your father thinks rolled stockings are4 ,your grandfather disapproved of side-bar buggies just as much as your father does of automobiles4 ,your grandfather considered the waltz just as indecent as your father does shimmying4 ,your grandfather thought your father should only read ,shakespeare and ,richardson1 and considered ,dickens frivolous1 just as your father thinks you ought to read ,dickens instead of #8,the ,sheik4' ,and your grandfather told your father how superior the young men of his day were1 and how they spent their time in improving their minds and always went to bed with the chickens1 and how they doted on intellectual conversation1 just as his father told him and great-great-great-great-grandfather told his son4 8,and it is all stuff and nonsense4 ,not a word of it has ever been true4 ,each succeeding generation of young people have been pleasure-loving and laughter-loving and foolish1 and have danced and played and skylarked4 ,and all the difference is that their games have taken on different phases in different ages4 ,it is a pity that fathers and mothers cannot remember this4 ,if they did and would look on with sympathy and understanding1 they could keep close enough to their children to know what they are doing and to stretch out a hand and hold them steady when they start to go wild1 and to snatch them back when they get too near to the edge of the pit4 ,for youth will be served4 ,youth must have its fling4 ,high spirits must find a vent4 ,suppress these with the heavy hand of authority and something blows up4 8,lock a girl in her room1 and she will climb out of the window4 ,forbid her to see boys at home1 and she will meet them on the street4 ,refuse to let her go to nice dances1 and she will slip away to low dance halls4 ,the wildest and most reckless girls are invariably those with the strictest parents4 ,the young people of to-day live in the world of to-day and must do as they do to-day4 ,parents must recognize that and deal with them on that platform if they wish to do their duty by their children40 ,,xlvii ,,losing ,a ,,wife',s ,,love ,one of the most curious superstitions in the world is the childlike belief that men have in the indestructibility of women's love4 ,they visualize the feminine heart as a sort of perpetual-motion machine that1 once they press the button and set it to work1 goes on automatically pumping up affection for them as long as they live1 and they think that nothing they do or say ever interferes with its functioning4 ,in a word1 they believe that if a man wins a woman's love it is his for keeps4 ,he can't lose it or mislay it4 ,the poor thing has no choice but to go on adoring him to the end1 because she is built that way4 ,it is a comfortable and consoling theory1 and men take liberties with it1 but the trouble is that it isn't true4 ,in reality1 women are just as fickle as men are1 and just as few women as men are capable of a deep and abiding love4 ,women's fancies are just as unstable as men's4 ,they are just as much lured by a handsome face and fall as easily for a smooth line of soft talk4 ,and there are just as many wives who get tired of their husbands as there are husbands who are weary of their wives4 ,the only difference between the sexes in the matter is that women face the situation1 while men shut their eyes to it and refuse to recognize that it exists4 ,every woman knows that because a man was in love with her when he married her is no indication that he is going to remain in love with her to the end of the chapter4 ,she knows that if she keeps her husband's affection she has to be up and doing1 and on the job4 ,that is why there are millions of women undergoing all the agonies of slow starvation trying to maintain a girlish figure2 why millions are boiled alive and thumped and scalped in beauty parlors1 and why the nation spends more a year for face paint than it does for house paint1 and why1 wherever we go1 we see fat1 middle-aged1 bread-and-butter wives attempting to look like flappers and acquire the technique of the vamp in order to keep their husbands nailed to their own firesides4 ,apparently1 however1 it never occurs to a man that there is the slightest necessity to make any effort to keep his wife fascinated and to prevent her eyes from roaming around in search of a sheik4 ,he may be bay-windowed and bald1 but if he reduces it is only on his doctor's orders1 and not because he wants to look boyish to his wife4 ,and he never buys a toupee until after he becomes a widower and begins to take notice again4 ,the idea that his wife might cease to love him actually never crosses the average man's mind4 ,he is convinced that she couldn't do it4 ,it is some peculiarity of the feminine constitution that makes a woman go on loving what has become unlovable4 ,now1 with a man it is different1 of course4 ,he realizes that he couldn't stay very long in love with a woman who was slouchy1 and sloppy1 and untidy looking1 who came to breakfast in a dirty kimono and run down at the heel slippers4 ,nor would he take much interest in kissing a cheek smeared with cold cream4 ,but he doesn't see why his wife shouldn't still regard him as a romantic figure when he goes around in a soiled shirt and a rumpled collar1 with grease spots on his coat and trousers that bag at the knees1 and offers to her lips a countenance with a two days' stubble of beard on it4 ,a man knows well enough that1 as far as he is concerned1 the only way to keep the love fires burning is to keep piling the fuel on it and pouring over it the oil of flattery and praise4 ,but he thinks that you don't have to put any more fuel on the fire of a woman's heart1 because it is a flame that miraculously replenishes itself4 ,so after he marries he never bothers to show her any attention1 or to pay her any compliments1 or to tell her that he loves her1 or give any indication that he regards her as anything but a piece of useful household furniture4 ,if any woman ever treated him that way his affection would mighty soon starve to death1 but he never has the slightest apprehension that his wife's love will perish on the same meager rations4 ,there are men who abuse their wives1 who swear at them1 and curse them1 and speak to them as if they were dogs4 ,there are men whose wives live in trembling fear of their tempers4 ,there are men who are stingy and who do not give to their wives1 who spend their lives slaving for them1 the poorest wage of an ill-paid servant4 ,yet these men go on believing that their wives still love them because they loved them in the days of courtship1 when they were handsome1 gallant1 and neat1 and attractive1 and loving1 and flattering1 and generous1 and considerate swains4 ,such men befool themselves by thinking that they cannot kill a woman's love4 ,never was there a greater mistake4 ,a woman's love is as delicate and as fragile a thing as a flower that you can crush with a finger4 ,and it takes never-ending skill1 and care1 and cherishing to keep it alive4 ,you can kill it with disgust4 ,you can kill it with unkindness4 ,you can kill it with injustice4 ,you can kill it with neglect1 and it would surprise many a man who still believes that his wife loves him in spite of the way he has treated her1 in spite of his indifference to her1 to know that her love for him has been dead so long that she has almost forgotten that she ever cared for him at all4 ,so ,i warn you1 ,mr4 ,man1 not to put any faith in the theory that you can't kill a woman's love4 ,women are like men2 they only love the lovable4 ,and if you wish to retain your wife's affections1 you have got to continue after marriage the same tactics you used in winning her4 ,,xlviii ,,the ,,lure ,,of ,,the ,,married ,,man ,a man wants to know why married men have such a fascination for girls1 and wherein a benedict's wooing differs from that of a bachelor4 ,the first part of this double-barreled question was answered by ,eve in the ,garden of ,eden1 and every girl takes after her greatest grandmother4 ,married men are forbidden fruit1 and that alone whets the appetite of the foolish little ,evelyns for them1 and makes them seem the prize pippins of the whole matrimonial orchard4 ,the thing that a woman cannot have1 that she has no right to have1 and especially the thing that some other woman possesses1 is always the thing that she wants most4 ,if you have ever watched women fight over a commonplace and unattractive article on a bargain table1 where each was determined to have it just because the others desired it1 you have the psychological explanation of why a girl falls for a married man that she wouldn't look at if he were single4 ,also1 women are the adventurous sex4 ,they love to play with danger as a child plays with fire1 and a large part of the lure of the married man consists in the fact that a girl knows that when she has an affair with one1 she is risking every shred of her reputation1 and gambling with her happiness1 and that any minute she may be cited as a corespondent1 and dragged into the slime of the divorce courts4 ,also1 the average girl is simply slopping over with romance1 and somehow she gets more kick out of being wooed under the rose than she does in an above board1 honest-to-,god courtship4 ,there is something about the secrecy of a love intrigue with a married man1 about the surreptitious letters1 about the stolen rendezvous1 that thrills her to the core of her being4 ,it makes her feel so desperately wicked1 like one of the grand passion heroines of her favorite novels1 who cried 8,all for love1 and the world well lost0 as she chucked her bonnet over the windmill4 ,it is because the married man is the only man in the world who is out of her reach1 and whom she has no right to try to grab2 it is because some other woman has set her seal of approval on him by marrying him2 it is because an illicit love episode is a streak of lurid romance in her drab days1 that the little ,totties and ,flossies are able to see the hero of their girlish dreams in the fat1 bald-headed1 middle-aged men for whom they work1 and the ,mauds and ,gwendolyns imagine that they have found their affinities in some ordinary commonplace married man1 who would bore them to tears if his wedding ring had not given him a fictitious value in their eyes4 ,add to this1 vanity and cruelty4 ,in the man hunt1 women look on the married man as big game1 and when they bring one down they feel as if they had captured an elephant instead of having shot a tame rabbit4 ,there are girls who boast of their conquests among married men1 and who have so little heart that they delight in watching the agonies of jealousy that they inflict on the poor defenseless wife4 ,many young women are likewise gold-diggers1 and these virtually confine their attentions to married men1 as wealthy bachelors are few and well-to-do middle-aged married men are plentiful and easy4 ,why the married man who starts out as a ,lothario is an easy winner of feminine hearts is perfectly obvious4 ,to begin with1 he has the same advantage that the widower has over the single man4 ,he is a professional1 so to speak1 instead of an amateur lover4 ,he has the education in women that only marriage can give a man1 for he has had a wife and1 like the wise man of ,kipling's poem1 he 8learned about women from her40 ,he has found out that all women are so hungry for love that they will swallow any soft talk without examining its quality4 ,he has found out that you can jolly a woman into anything4 ,he has found out that women melt down into a mush that you can do with as you will1 under a little understanding and sympathy4 ,he has found out that if you remember an anniversary1 and a woman's taste in two or three things1 she will believe it an absolute proof of undying devotion4 ,the married man knows that there is one sure short cut to virtually every woman's heart4 ,it is pity4 ,and so he begins his love-making by telling the girl that his wife does not understand him1 that she is not his real soul-mate1 that they have nothing in common1 and that his home is bleak1 and barren1 and unhappy4 ,generally he accuses his wife of being a human iceberg1 while he is a perfect geyser of love and tenderness4 ,and then he moans3 8,oh1 why did we not meet in time80 ,and the poor little idiot of a girl undertakes the consolation rle4 ,of course1 all of this effective love play is more or less impossible to the bachelor4 ,he lacks the technique of the married man4 ,he cannot appeal to a woman's sympathies1 or pose before her in the rle of a martyr4 ,he can only make love in the commonplace old way1 and it cramps his style4 ,but the real reason that the married man is a devil among women is just the same old reason that made ,eve listen to the serpent4 ,,xlix ,,forget ,,it ,every day some girl writes me that she is young1 quite as pretty as the other girls about her1 that she dresses as well1 and makes as good an appearance as they do1 and strives to please1 but that no man ever pays her the slightest attention1 or asks her to step out with him of an evening4 ,then this girl goes on to say that she is a business girl1 but she doesn't make a very good salary1 and she is discouraged1 and blue1 and wants to know what to do4 ,my advice to a girl in this situation--and there are millions of her--is to forget men4 ,give up the struggle to attract them4 ,quit trying to catch one4 ,renounce romance4 ,throw away all thoughts of marriage4 ,just accept the fact that nature did not put you in the vamp class1 and play your game of life from that angle4 ,this counsel will be a bitter pill for the girl to swallow1 but she will find it good medicine that will work a speedy and permanent cure1 if she will try it on herself4 ,why certain women are magnets that draw every man they meet to them1 and why nothing in trousers except upon compulsion ever goes near other women just as good looking1 just as charming in every way1 is one of the mysteries nobody has ever solved4 ,nor has anyone ever been able to suggest a remedy for this state of affairs4 ,the fast steamship1 the lightning express1 the aeroplane1 have annihilated distance1 but human ingenuity has failed to invent any device to make a boy go to see the girl next door if he doesn't want to go4 ,science has torn its secrets from the earth1 but it cannot find out what quality it is in woman that attracts men4 ,it has invented chemicals that work magic in the physical world1 but it has never discovered a reliable love philter4 ,so that's that4 ,and it is a wise girl who has the courage to look herself in the face1 and see whether she has the 8come hither0 look in her eye1 and if she hasn't1 to recognize the fact1 and devote herself to a more promising occupation than chasing men1 who1 in the end1 always make their getaway1 unless they desire to be caught4 ,therefore1 ,i would urge the girl who does not make a spontaneous hit with men1 to quit wasting her time and her energies in the vain attempt to decoy them into noticing her1 and to put all that lost motion and force into her work1 where she will get better results4 ,believe me1 if the girl who does not attract men1 tried as hard to sell herself to her job as she does to sell herself socially1 she would not have to complain long of holding a small position4 ,she would be a highly paid secretary1 or buyer1 or department manager4 ,if the girl who does not attract men1 studied her employer's moods and tenses as earnestly as she does those of some little jellybean1 and if she was as anxious to please her employer as she is to please the jazz hounds and cakeaters she meets1 she would find herself one of the valued employees who are always spoken of reverentially as 8our ,miss ,so-and so40 ,if the girl who never has a date would put in one hundredth part of the intensive study on her work that she gives to the technique of the popular girl1 and to trying to find out something about the psychology of customers or the history of the goods she handles1 or the details of the business she is employed in1 she would have employers fighting over her4 ,in a word1 if the girl who is not popular with men would concentrate her thoughts1 her interests1 and her ambitions1 on getting ahead in the occupation she has chosen1 instead of wasting her time and energies in a fruitless attempt to charm men1 she would be a success instead of a failure2 she would be happy instead of miserable4 ,as it is now she falls between the stools4 ,she is a poor makeshift in her job1 who gets nowhere1 because her one desire1 her one ambition1 her one aim in life is to attract men and catch a husband1 and she is miserable1 and discouraged1 and bitter1 and disgruntled1 because she is balked in that attempt4 ,and she is a siren without allure who never arrives at the altar1 so she fails both as a business woman1 and in her effort to catch a husband4 ,this is a great pity1 because while love and marriage are highly desirable blessings to come into a woman's life1 they are not the whole of life4 ,the world is full of such a lot of things besides sentiment4 ,there is independence1 the freedom to come and go as one pleases4 ,there is the exhilarating sport of climbing up the ladder of success1 which has a million thrills for every round4 ,there is the solid satisfaction of achievement4 ,there is the good job that keeps one on one's tiptoes so that one never has a dull moment4 ,there is the happiness that comes of being employed in constructive work4 ,there is one's own home1 with one's own pots1 and pans1 and doilies1 if one wants them4 ,take it from me1 girls1 the woman who espouses a career does not get the worst husband there is4 ,she has a life companion from whom she never has to wheedle the pennies4 ,she never has to listen to any back talk or criticisms4 ,she is never afraid of this companion getting tired and running off after flappers4 ,it is only the lucky women1 who make exceptional marriages1 who are as well off as the business girls who do not marry4 ,furthermore1 there is this comfort to be given the girl who quits trying to attract men1 and gets busy with her job4 ,men are contrary creatures4 ,pursue them1 and they flee from you4 ,lay traps1 and they walk wide of them4 ,but let them alone1 indicate that you are indifferent to them2 that you are concerned with your own affairs in which they have no part2 let them realize that you can get on quite well without them1 and it piques their interest4 ,they come flocking around of their own accord to see what manner of woman you are4 ,also the girl who makes something of herself1 and who rises high in her profession is thrown with the men at the top1 the men of brains1 and they are often attracted to her while the silly little boys with whom she used to play about were not4 ,so ,i say again to the girls who are not attractive to men1 stop wasting your time in the useless attempt to vamp men4 ,put your heart and your soul into your job4 ,work is the consolation prize ,god gives us when we miss getting the thing we wanted most4 ,l ,,lost ,,love ,many women ask me how they can regain the love of some man which they have lost4 ,sometimes1 a girl tells me1 weeping1 of a once ardent lover who has become cold and neglectful1 who no longer comes to see her1 and she wants to know how to bring him back1 and make him once more crazy about her4 ,oftenest1 however1 it is a wife who seeks desperately for some magic whereby she can light again the love fires in the heart of a husband who has ceased to care for her1 who is tired of her1 and who does not even take the trouble to hide from her the fact that he regards her as a burden1 of which he would rid himself if he could4 ,it is the tragedy of these women that they are doomed to love men after the men no longer love them4 ,not even neglect1 and insult1 and faithlessness1 kill their affection for those on whom they have set their foolish1 doglike hearts4 ,so they cling with desperate hands to the men who are trying to break away from them1 hoping against hope1 praying some miracle will happen that will give them back their lost love4 ,but their prayers are never answered4 ,the miracle never happens4 ,no sorcerer can teach a woman how to weave a spell a second time about a man4 ,the love potions that the credulous buy from fortune tellers1 never work1 and though a woman conjure never so deftly1 she cannot bring back the heart that has slipped out of her keeping4 ,for of all dead things1 nothing is so dead as dead love4 ,no power can breathe into it again the breath of life1 and make it a vital thing once more4 ,we do not know why we love4 ,we do not know why some particular man or woman makes a peculiar appeal that makes us prefer him or her to all the other men and women in the world4 ,we do not know why the touch of certain hands thrill us2 why the quirk of a smile1 or the look in an eye1 draws us2 why we have a sense of comradeship with certain individuals2 why some man or woman fascinates us2 or why we desire one man or woman more than another1 who may be better looking1 more intelligent1 more worthy in every way4 ,nor do we any more know why we cease to love than we know why we love4 ,we do not know why the touch of the hand that has thrilled us ceases to thrill2 nor why the charm that was once so potent vanishes into thin air1 nor why the fascination flees1 and the one who once held us enthralled becomes a bore who wearies us to tears4 ,it just happens1 and we are as helpless before one situation as before the other4 ,there are not many men who are cruel enough to find sport in breaking a woman's heart1 and who deliberately win a girl's love1 and play with it1 and fling it away4 ,there are not many husbands who would not remain their wives' eternal lovers1 if it was in their power to control their affections4 ,that was their romantic dream when they married4 ,that way their happiness lay1 and they would have kept their romance had it been a matter of their own volition4 ,unfortunately1 the disillusion came4 ,the glory and the circling wings departed4 ,somehow their wives lost their allure for them1 and strive as they might1 they could not see them again with the eyes of a lover1 or bring back their charm4 ,many a man would be just as glad to fall in love again with his wife as she would be to have him fall in love with her once more1 but he cannot do it4 ,you cannot fan dead ashes into a flame4 ,perhaps if wives realized how impossible it is to resurrect a dead love1 they would guard the living love more carefully1 and run fewer risks of killing it4 ,they would not take the chance of disillusioning their husbands by going about sloppy and slovenly at home1 and thus presenting a fatal contrast to the trimly dressed women in their offices1 and the beautified ladies they meet in society4 ,they would reflect that no man would have much appetite for domestic kisses when flavored with cold cream1 and that if a wife wishes to be regarded as a ladylove1 she must look the part instead of resembling a sack of potatoes4 ,and they would see to it that love is not assassinated on their hearthstones by ceaseless1 senseless quarrels1 by whining1 and complaining1 and nagging1 and petty tyrannies4 ,nor would they permit love to die of that commonest and most deadly ailment1 boredom4 ,for if a woman can interest her husband enough before marriage to make him pick her out from all the rest of the world for his life partner1 she can interest him enough to hold him until the end of the chapter if she is willing to take the trouble and perform the labor necessary to do so4 ,if1 though1 a woman1 through carelessness or ignorance1 has lost the love of the man she loves1 there is absolutely no way in which she can win it back4 ,through duty or a sense of honor she may hold his body1 but his soul has gone from her forever1 and she is wise if she accepts the inevitable4 ,if she is a girl1 she should let the sweetheart who is tired of her go1 instead of trying to hold him4 ,some other man she may make love her1 but not the old one for whom she has lost her charm4 ,if she is a married woman whose husband has ceased to love her1 let her agonize no more over the impossible task of reviving his passion for her4 ,let her fill her life with other interests and thank ,god that there are so many other pleasant things in the world besides love4 ,for of this she may rest assured4 ,there is no reviving of dead love4 ,when once we have lost our taste for a person everything is over4 ,it is finished1 as the ,french say4 ,,li ,,the ,,show ,,wedding ,the ,turks have passed a law prohibiting elaborate and costly marriage ceremonials1 and forbidding the giving of expensive wedding presents4 ,what a pity that we cannot have such an edict issued in this country6 ,for there is no other one thing that would do more to allay heartburnings and jealousies1 prevent nervous prostration and bankruptcy1 and promote peace and thrift than to officially 8can0 the show wedding4 ,in all fairness1 we must admit that the display wedding is a feminine vice4 ,no man1 probably1 ever really yearned to make a public exhibition of himself as he was being led as a lamb to the slaughter4 ,but by the time she is ten years old the average girl has begun planning her wedding and deciding whether she will have a big church affair1 with ushers and flower girls and ring-bearers and maids and matrons of honor and bridesmaids and a white satin dress and a real lace veil1 and all the other flubdubs1 or whether she will be married at home under a floral canopy1 with an admiring audience fenced off from her by white ribbons4 ,and to realize this ten-minute splurge she is ready to ruthlessly ruin her family and half kill herself4 ,if she doesn't get it1 she goes through life feeling that she has missed her big moment4 ,it is from this silly1 dopey daydream that women should be rescued by law1 since few of them have the common sense and good taste to put it aside themselves4 ,to begin with1 it would do away with the disgraceful1 barefaced holdups that precede weddings4 ,these are camouflaged under the appropriate name of 8showers10 for they cause every friend of an engaged girl to shed salt and bitter tears at the realization of how much they will be mulcted for in silk-stocking showers1 and handkerchief showers1 and towel showers1 and kitchen showers1 and all the other showers that go to make up a bridal deluge4 ,it would also prevent that sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach with which we are attacked at sight of a large1 thick white envelope in the mail4 ,we know that it means a 8stand-and-deliver0 present1 which somehow always comes just at a time when the rent is overdue1 or a doctor bill has to be paid1 or we had saved up a little money by pinching economies to buy a new hat or suit4 ,it isn't that we are stingy or mean1 or that we begrudge a gift to a friend4 ,it is only that we would like to give when we can do so freely1 and enjoy the giving1 instead of having to give at a time when it is actually dishonest to bestow a present4 ,why1 ,i have known people who had to put off needed dental work or taking a sick child to the country when three or four wedding presents fell together4 ,the wedding gift was a debt of honor4 8,they sent us a set of salad forks40 8,she gave us a clock when we were married10 and it had to be returned in kind4 ,the abolition of the show wedding would prolong the days of many a poor1 old1 hard-worked father1 whose daughter's trousseau is the straw that breaks the camel's back4 ,it is not because she needs them1 or has any use for them1 that ,sally ,ann1 who is a poor girl marrying a poor young man1 has to have piles of orchid chiffon undergarments1 hand-embroidered and belaced and beribboned4 ,it is because they are to be displayed to her catty friends1 who will finger them1 and appraise them1 and criticize them1 and then go home wondering how her father is ever going to pay for them4 ,if her lingerie were not ,exhibit ,a at the wedding ,sally ,ann would go along and provide herself with a reasonable amount of underwear that would stand wear and washing1 and not run papa into debt4 ,but ,sally ,ann has to have her show wedding4 ,she has to trail up the church aisle in her white satin and her tulle veil1 and all the rest of it4 ,and by the time father has paid for the church and the flowers1 and the bridesmaid's presents1 and the reception1 and the automobiles1 he has had to borrow money at the bank and has saddled himself with a debt that bends his back a little more1 and puts new lines in his face1 and adds to his burden in work and worry1 which was already more than he could bear4 ,and it has all been for a few minutes' flaunting of herself in the face of an audience of people who smiled and nudged each other1 and said3 8,did you ever see her look so homely8 ,brides always look their worst40 8,wonder what he ever saw in her to make him pick her out40 8,is that the bridegroom8 ,looks like a scared rabbit40 8,how on earth do you suppose her father will ever pay for this8 ,everybody knows he can't afford it10 and so on1 and so on4 ,just what everybody says at a wedding4 ,above all1 the abolition of the show wedding and the saving of the foolish expenditure it involved would enable many a young couple to set up housekeeping out of debt2 and1 best of all1 they would begin life simply and honestly1 and with the admiration and gratitude of all who know them4 ,getting married is the crucial act in a man's and woman's life4 ,it is the most awful and solemn thing they ever do4 ,and why they want to have a thousand curious eyes peering at them when they take the step that is going to plunge them into hell or lift them into heaven passes comprehension4 ,it would not be more incongruous to send out invitations to people to come and watch you die than it is to come and see you married4 ,wise that young couple who simply slip around to the parson and make their vows at the altar1 with no one but ,god to look on4 ,,lii ,,when ,,your ,,children ,,are ,,glad ,,you ,,die ,parents seem to run to extremes4 ,of the common1 or garden1 variety of fathers and mothers there appears to be two types4 ,one is the overindulgent1 which lavishes too much money1 too many fine clothes1 too many motorcars on its offspring1 and that brings up its children to be idle and worthless wasters and spenders4 ,the other type of parent is the ,spartan one that is as hard as nails1 unsympathetic1 close-fisted2 that denies its children every indulgence1 and that holds to the theory that the harder it makes life for the young the better it is for them4 ,both schools of thought are wrong4 ,undoubtedly1 parents make a very great mistake when they sacrifice everything to their children and make doormats of themselves for their children to walk on4 ,they weaken their sons and daughters by pampering them too much and by standing between them and the struggle that alone makes muscle of body and soul1 and they do their children a cruel injustice by cultivating in them extravagant tastes and habits that perhaps they cannot later on give them the money to gratify4 ,certainly it is an unedifying spectacle to behold1 as we often do1 a mother in patched1 made-over clothes1 while her daughters fare forth in the latest imported ,parisian models1 or a seedy father riding on the street car while son burns up the road in a speedy sports car and is decked out like ,solomon in all his glory4 ,also we can but deplore the folly of parents who skimp1 and slave1 and deny themselves every comfort in order that their daughters can make a splurge in society1 and that their sons may loaf through college courses1 where they acquire nothing but a college yell and a contempt for their hump-shouldered old dads4 ,we could weep when we see tired old women who are converted into unpaid nursemaids by their married daughters who are always coming in and dumping their babies down on mother when they want to go off on a trip or play bridge4 ,and what tears we have left we could shed over the men whose sons are always getting into trouble and coming back to father for help when they know that they are robbing him of the pittance he has saved up for his old age4 ,but between doing everything for your children and doing nothing at all for them is a long step1 and the parents who do not help their children to get a start in life fail just as much in doing their duty to them as do the foolishly fond parents who kill their children's initiative by swaddling them in cotton wool4 ,of course1 necessity is a grim teacher4 ,if you chuck a child into the water where it must sink or swim1 it is pretty apt to strike out and keep afloat somehow4 ,and it is true that a great many successful men and women are the children of parents who were so poor that they could do nothing for them1 and that they fought their way to an education and battled their way to success against all sorts of hardships4 ,but there is a great difference between the parents who cannot help their children and those who will not help their children1 between the fathers and mothers who would give their heart's blood to their children and those who will not give them a few dollars4 ,and while the children may feel all love and reverence for the poor parents who were powerless to assist them1 they can but feel bitter resentment toward the parents who stand callously by1 watching their struggles without holding out a helping hand4 ,a large number of parents have an idea that it does young people good to be deprived of pleasures1 to be reared to no indulgences1 to know hardships4 ,and so even when they have plenty of money they deny their children pretty clothes and the advantages of education and travel1 and when they get married they let them scuffle for themselves4 ,they do not give the girl a dowry nor set the boy up in business4 ,it seems to me that this is a cruel and an inhuman thing to do1 and that it serves no purpose but to kill in the child's breast every particle of affection it had for its father and mother4 ,for it dooms the children to years of struggle and self-sacrifice1 pinching economies and anxieties that it might so easily have escaped4 ,and ,god knows that life is not so easy for any of us that we can afford to have any of the pleasure taken out of it4 ,it also often shuts the door of opportunity for the child or puts off success for many weary years4 ,the few thousands of dollars that father might have invested in the firm which would have raised ,tom from being a clerk to a partner might have carried him on to fortune4 ,if father would have financed the extra course of study in his profession for ,john1 he would have achieved success and begun big money making years before he did4 ,if father had given ,mary an allowance big enough to hire servants1 she would not have worked herself to death cooking1 and washing1 and baby tending4 ,but father wouldn't do it4 ,he held on to every penny and let his children fight it out the best way they could4 ,the daughter of such a man once said to me3 8,my father is dead and ,i have inherited a large fortune1 but it has come to me too late to do me any real good4 ,when ,i was a girl ,i never had any pretty clothes4 ,i never had a nice home to invite my friends to4 ,i never had any indulgences4 ,i never could even go with the people ,i was entitled to go with because ,i did not live in the style they did4 ,i married a poor man and my father never helped us4 ,i wore my youth out in housework that ,i was not strong enough to do4 ,if he had given me #aj1jjj when ,i needed it1 it would have done me more good than all that ,i have inherited does me now40 ,the moral of all of which is1 do not sacrifice yourself to your children2 do not impoverish yourself for them1 but help than all you can while they are young and while they need it1 if you do not wish them to be glad when you are dead and your will is read4 ,,liii ,,what ,,price ,,pleasure8 ,do you ever ask yourself if you are not paying too high a price for many of the things in which you indulge yourself8 ,so far as material things go1 most of us are keen enough about seeing that we get our money's worth4 ,we do not pay a thousand dollars for a string of glass beads4 ,we do not buy a battered flivver at ,rolls ,royce figures1 nor will we stand being charged banquet prices for a corned beef and cabbage dinner4 ,when it comes to spiritual values1 however1 we lose all sense of proportion4 ,we become spendthrifts1 who throw our priceless treasures away1 and we literally sell our birthrights for a mess of pottage4 ,one thinks of this particularly just now when one watches so many young persons making such bad and losing bargains with fate4 ,there are the boys scarcely out of their teens who think it is such a sporting thing1 so dashing1 and that it shows that they are such men of the world to carry flasks on their hips and drink the vile poison that bootleggers sell4 ,for the sake of the kick they get out of this and for a few minutes' exhilaration1 they are risking not only death itself1 but what is far1 far worse1 blindness and imbecility and every sort of nervous ailment4 ,look at the pasty-faced1 blear-eyed youths with shaking hands that you see all about you1 their minds dulled1 their energies paralyzed1 their ambitions killed by drink2 who are done with life before they have ever begun to live4 ,what a price they have paid for booze6 ,can any boy look at a drunken sot1 dirty1 poor1 despised1 and think that the pleasure that he has got out of drink has paid for what it cost him8 ,and the girls4 ,the girls who are mad for gaiety1 crazy for the admiration of men2 the girls who go on drinking parties1 who indulge in petting parties1 who joy-ride until all hours of the night1 who let men kiss and fondle them because that is the price that men demand for taking them out4 ,how cheaply they sell themselves6 ,many a girl pays with shame and disgrace that follow her to the longest day she lives for a single wild party4 ,they buy their fun high1 these girls who exchange for it their self-respect1 their modesty1 their maidenly innocence and their good names4 ,the family quarrel4 ,that is a domestic luxury for which we have to pay so dearly that it is never worth the cost4 ,undoubtedly1 when one is feeling cross1 and irritable1 and disgruntled1 there is a certain luxury in letting go all of one's self-control1 and turning one's temper loose1 and stabbing right and left with cruel words that wound like dagger thrusts4 ,also it salves one's own conscience to lay the blame for everything that goes wrong on some one else4 ,therefore1 many husbands and wives go on a daily orgy of nerves and temper4 ,they vent their spleen against life on each other4 ,they say to each other all the mean and hateful things that they are too politic to say to strangers4 ,but the price they pay6 ,it bankrupts them4 ,for they kill each other's love4 ,they slay each other's respect4 ,they inevitably come to hate each other and to cherish secret grudges1 born of insult and injustice4 ,there is no peace nor tenderness in their homes and their marriages either end in divorce or become long drawn out misery4 ,what a price to pay for the lack of a little self-control6 ,extravagance4 ,the price of indulging yourself in your youth in the things that you cannot afford is poverty and dependence in your old age4 ,the woman who cannot resist pretty clothes4 ,the woman who is bitten by the society bug and who tries to keep up with people better off than she is4 ,the man who belongs to lodges1 when he can't pay the rent collector4 ,the man who buys an automobile and a radio on the instalment plan4 ,they will pay1 as sure as fate1 for gratifying the desire of the moment by long years of bitter dependence4 ,twenty or thirty years from now they will be down and out1 and they will either be in almshouses or the hangers on of relatives1 who resent having to take care of ,poor ,uncle ,john or ,cousin ,susan4 ,or they will be burdens on their children1 who are having all they can do to take care of their own families4 ,the highest priced cars in the world are not the gold-plated1 satin-lined jewel boxes made for millionaires4 ,they are the cheap little cars bought by the people who cannot afford them and who have to go into debt for them4 ,and there is the price the lazy pay for shiftlessness4 ,and the price the mother pays who lets her children roam the streets while she plays bridge or goes to clubs4 ,and the price the sarcastic pay who alienate a friend for the sake of making a witty speech4 ,there are a thousand other little gratifications of a mood or inclination1 the desire of a moment1 that we pay for with tears1 with loneliness1 with failure1 with our very heart's blood4 ,what a pity we don't count the cost of things before we indulge ourselves in them6 ,,liv ,,the ,,ideal ,,mother ,a woman asks3 8,what qualities should the ideal mother possess80 ,to begin with1 a mother should have love1 and tenderness1 and sympathy1 and be willing to sacrifice herself for her children4 ,these are the stock virtues of motherhood1 and virtually all mothers possess them4 ,but they alone do not make a woman a good mother4 ,often they do as much harm as good1 for you can ruin a child by blind devotion4 ,you can enfeeble it by too much tenderness4 ,you can make it a selfish egotist and an overbearing brute by making yourself a doormat for it to walk over4 ,so to love1 tenderness1 sympathy and unselfishness the ideal mother must add other qualities1 and the most important of these is the ability to see her job as a whole and to realize that she is responsible for the finished goods that she turns out4 ,not many mothers have this vision2 or1 rather1 they shut their eyes and refuse to see that the molding of their children's characters1 the settling of their destinies1 is in their own hands4 ,they let a high-tempered child grow up undisciplined and without teaching it any self-control4 ,they let a slothful1 lazy one grow up without forming habits of industry4 ,they never teach a self-indulgent1 greedy child to curb its appetite4 ,they spoil and pamper their children1 and then they say that they 8hope0 their children will turn out all right6 ,the ideal mother knows that you form children's characters in the cradle1 and so she does not trust to luck with her youngsters4 ,she begins when they are babies to teach them self-control1 and thrift1 and industry1 and all the principles of right living4 ,the ideal mother must have a backbone4 ,unfortunately1 most mothers permit their hearts to crowd out their spinal column until they have no more backbone than a fishing worm4 ,this is why you hear women say despairingly that they can't do a thing with their #aj-year-old child4 ,it takes nerve1 and grit1 and determination1 and courage to fight self-willed youngsters1 and mother is too soft to do it4 ,so she gives in rather than listen to her baby's howls of rage or go through the struggle of conquering a disobedient child4 ,and the inevitable result is that her children have a contempt for her as a weakling1 and ride roughshod over her1 and become the outbreaking young hoodlums who fill our jails and brothels4 ,the ideal mother is a human being4 ,she doesn't pose before her children as a plaster saint or an oracle on a pedestal4 ,one of the reasons why children do not confide in their parents is because the average father and mother pretend that they were such models of all the virtues when they were young that their children feel they have nothing in common with them and that they wouldn't understand how a boy or girl feels who wants to do all sorts of foolish things4 ,how can a girl tell her mother that a boy kissed her1 if mother represents herself as ,miss ,prunes and ,prisms1 and says that when she was young girls never skylarked1 and never went on joy-rides or to cabarets1 or held hands in the movies1 but spent a pleasant evening sitting up in the parlor in the presence of their elders discussing improving topics8 ,it is the human mothers who can sympathize with their children's desire for good times and help them to them2 who will stretch a point to get a girl a new frock or a boy the fraternity pin he craves1 who get well enough acquainted with their children to really help them and guard them4 ,the ideal mother has a sense of proportion4 ,she doesn't see her ducklings as swans4 ,her love doesn't blind her to her children's faults and blemishes4 ,rather it sharpens her vision1 so that she gets a line on them as they really are4 ,thereby she is enabled to help them make the most of such gifts as they have4 ,she sees that ,tom is brilliant but unstable and lacking in purpose1 and she holds him to whatever he undertakes to do until she forms the habit of steadfastness in him4 ,she sees that ,john is dull but a plodder1 and she trains him for some occupation in which quickness of mind is not demanded and in which the prizes go to faithfulness and hard work4 ,she sees that ,mary is intelligent but homely1 and lacking the charms that allure men1 so she gives her some occupation by which she can make a good living for herself and which will fill her life with interest4 ,and this sense of proportion keeps her from making her children ridiculous by bragging about them1 and boring every one with whom she comes in contact with endless stories of what wonderful and marvelous creatures they are1 and how1 wherever they go1 they are the cynosure of all eyes and the admiration of all beholders4 ,finally1 the ideal mother should have a sense of humor that will enable her to laugh instead of cry over many of her children's peccadilloes and keep her from taking them too seriously4 ,for the thing that ails young people is chiefly youth1 and they will get over that if you will give them a little time4 ,because they are idle1 irresponsible1 pleasure-loving1 dance-mad1 girl and boy crazy is no reason for prophesying dismal things about them and wringing your hands in despair4 ,it is a passing phase of life at which we elders may well grin1 remembering the time when we also were young and foolish4 ,an old woman who had raised up a remarkable family of sons and daughters once gave me this as her recipe for bringing up children3 8,kiss them when they are good4 ,spank them when they're bad and teach them to obey you40 ,that is the whole of the law and the prophets4 ,,lv ,,how ,,to ,,catch ,a ,,wife 8,you are always telling girls how to catch husbands10 says a young man4 8,why don't you give us chaps a few tips about how to get wives80 ,well1 son1 perhaps ,i unconsciously favor women because ,i belong to their lodge4 ,also1 it is more difficult for a woman to catch a husband than it is for a man to get a wife1 not only because women are more inclined to matrimony than men are1 but because a woman's pursuit of a man has to be stealthy and secret and under cover1 with all of her tracks carefully hidden and her purposes veiled1 whereas a man can go after a woman openly and aboveboard1 with everybody looking on and applauding the chase4 ,therefore1 the woman is more in need of any stray hints that may improve her technique than the man is4 ,still1 far be it from me to withhold from my brothers any information ,i may have about the short cuts to the feminine heart4 ,so to the really earnest seeker after knowledge on this subject ,i would say3 ,first4 ,study your girl4 ,catalogue her4 ,find out to what type she belongs and adapt your tactics to the situation1 for all women no more rise to the same line of courtship than all fish bite at the same bait4 ,there are some feminine hearts that can only be taken by assault and battery and others that surrender to patient siege4 ,there are women whose love is for sale to the highest bidder and others who bestow it in pity4 ,there are women who like a business proposition and women who fall only for the romantic wooing4 ,so there you are1 and your success will depend upon your ability to psychoanalyze the particular woman and upon the skill with which you suggest to her that you are the great unsatisfied need of her soul4 ,if the girl is of the clear-eyed1 upstanding1 competent business type1 your best method of winning her is by the good1 old1 well-tried ,platonic friendship method4 ,she isn't anxious to exchange a mahogany desk for a kitchen range nor to give up a good pay envelope and an easy job to toil for some man for nothing4 ,likewise1 she has worked with men too long for her to see any rosy halo around the masculine brow1 so she is pretty apt to shy off at any suggestion of marriage and balk at the thought of the altar4 ,but life lacks savor to every woman without masculine society1 and so this particular type of woman is especially allured by the idea of a beautiful and satisfying friendship with some man4 ,and when a chap has got his toe that far into the door to a woman's heart it is his own fault if he does not open it all the way4 ,only there is this word of warning3 ,never pop the question to the business girl in the morning of a sunshiny day when she has on a new frock and a good hat and everything is going swimmingly at the office and she feels fit and fine and ready to buck the world4 ,instead1 choose a rainy evening1 when she is sitting alone at home1 dejected and forlorn1 when she is tired and the boss has been grumpy4 ,then the thing she wants most on earth is just a nice1 strong masculine shoulder to cry on4 ,if the girl you want is a flapper1 your best ally is your bankbook4 ,all you need to look good to her is to be a good spender and a fast worker4 ,hold not your hand and count not the cost of jewelry and trinketry and candy and flowers and cabarets and eats and joy-rides1 and remember that the man with the longest purse wins4 ,some day she will jazz with you to the preacher1 and you will live scrappily ever afterward4 ,if the girl upon whom your affections are set is a demure little ,puritan1 make her your ,mother ,confessor4 ,confide to her all your sins1 real and imaginary4 ,invent a dark past for her benefit4 ,make her believe that but for her ,sacred ,influence you would become an abandoned character and that she alone can lead you up to the higher life4 ,all women have the reformation complex1 and the better they are and the less they know of the world the harder they fall for the belief that a grown man's character is like a piece of dough that they can mold into any shape they please4 ,once let a girl get the idea into her head that she is responsible for your soul1 and she is yours for the taking4 ,if the girl you want is one that you made mud pies with in childhood and went to school with1 and who refuses to see you in a sentimental light1 don't be discouraged by her telling you that she will be a sister to you4 ,just keep right on strutting your ,rachel-and-,jacob stuff4 ,mighty few women can resist that4 ,make yourself a habit with the girl4 ,make yourself necessary to her happiness and comfort by always paying her the little attentions that women like4 ,fetch and carry for her4 ,be the one person in the world she can always depend upon to make life pleasant and agreeable for her4 ,then suddenly drop her cold4 ,begin paying furious attentions to some woman she always accuses of being made up and older than she looks and an artful hussy1 and it is a hundred-to-one bet that she will call you back and let you see that her feelings toward you were not at all what she had supposed they were4 ,for when she thinks you are about to marry another woman she will wake up to the fact that life will be cinders1 ashes and dust without you4 ,if the girl you desire is one of the morbid sort who hangs between 8,i will0 and 8,i won't10 who is always vivisecting her heart and taking her emotional temperature1 what you need to use is caveman methods4 ,she is just dying to have you drag her to the altar by the hair of her head1 and if you are half a man you will do it4 ,don't ever ask that kind of a woman to marry you4 ,tell her you are going to marry her and that you have the license and the ring in your pocket and are on the way to the chapel with her1 and you will give her a thrill that will last a lifetime4 ,these are only a few of the many ways to win a wife4 ,it is dead easy1 and any man can do it who has gumption enough to work out a cross-word puzzle4 ,,lvi ,,dangerous ,,girls ,chief among the women from whom a young man should pray his guardian angel to deliver him is the ,hinting ,girl4 ,she is a gentle grafter who holds up every man she meets with a pair of innocent-looking blue eyes that bid him stand and deliver just as effectually and efficiently as if he were looking down the barrels of a couple of blue-nosed revolvers in the hands of a highway robber4 ,you will find these cheerful workers1 son1 where you least expect them4 ,the very highest society is filled with girls of undisputed position and unquestioned morals1 who ruthlessly plunder every man they meet1 and you will never encounter an individual more to be feared than these bandits of the parlor4 ,did you ever wonder why one girl receives so many more presents than another1 and why every man who passes lays some offering on her shrine8 ,take it from me1 this is the result of science and not mere chance4 ,observe1 closely1 and you will see1 when you call1 that she steers the conversation artfully around to the latest play1 and before you know it you have offered to take her to it4 ,also1 she has let you know that violets are her favorite flower1 and the date of her birthday4 ,before ,christmas she artlessly confides in you where there is the jeweled vanity1 or the hand-painted fan1 that she has set her heart upon1 and she couldn't shout it at you any plainer if she bawled it to you through a megaphone that she expects you to come across1 and will think you a piker if you don't4 ,beware the ,hinting ,girl1 son4 ,she is the woman who is accessory before the crime of half of the embezzlements of trusted clerks who go wrong1 and who1 if she got her deserts1 would stand in the prisoners' dock by the side of the poor1 weak1 trembling boy who has stolen to buy her jewels or to give her a good time4 ,and she makes the sort of wife whose husband rises up and sits down to a never-ending chant of 8,gimme6 ,gimme6 ,gimme60 ,then there's the ,girl ,with a ,past4 ,very often she has been more sinned against than sinning4 ,probably her morals are just as good as your own1 son2 but1 even so1 such marriages rarely turn out happily4 ,for we have to face the naked fact that1 while a man may love a woman well enough to forget and forgive her indiscretions1 society1 which is not in love with her1 remembers them all4 ,and it reminds her husband that it recalls them4 ,the man who marries a ,woman ,with a ,past is pretty much in the same fix as the man who hires a reformed embezzler to be his cashier4 ,he hopes he will run straight1 but he keeps an eye on the cash box--a situation which doesn't make for domestic felicity4 ,of course1 there are women who reform and gather in their wild oats crops and ever after raise nothing but garden truck around their doorstep1 but even while their husbands are devouring their domestic cabbages and onions there rarely comes a family spat in which they do not throw in their wives' teeth the kind of farmers they have been4 ,the truth is that it takes a big man and woman to defy the conventions4 ,that is what makes it safest for those of us who are little people to play the game according to the rules laid down by ,hoyle4 ,and one of these rules is that women must keep their skirts clean4 ,by and large it is a good rule1 son1 for it means the purity of race1 the integrity of society and a lot of other things that keep this old world going4 ,then there's the ,weeping ,girl4 ,whenever you meet with a gentle1 sweet1 soft1 babyish-looking little girl1 with a chin that trembles and big eyes that overflow with tears at the slightest provocation1 and who can cry without her nose getting red1 fly1 son1 fly4 ,she will fasten herself upon you1 and when you try to make a getaway she will cling to you and weep4 ,and no man can behold unmoved a woman crying for him1 because he is such a good thing4 ,you will stop to wipe her eyes2 and all will be over with you except the long1 long years of rainy matrimony when you will have to deal with a wife who cannot be reasoned with or cajoled or coerced into doing anything she doesn't want to do1 because you will be so afraid of starting another freshet of tears4 ,then there's the ,domestic ,girl1 who baits her hook with angels' food4 ,you might go farther and do worse than marry the ,domestic ,girl1 for while romance is transient one's appetite remains1 and after one's illusions are gone it is a comfortable thing to have a good dinner to fall back upon4 ,still1 one must confess1 the ,domestic ,girl is apt to have only a bread-and-butter conversation1 of which a man might tire in time2 so1 unless your stomach is developed in excess of your heart1 walk warily when the ,domestic ,girl begins to inveigle you into little meals for two that she cooks for you under a pink-shaded lamp4 ,lastly1 there is the girl who is just near you--the girl you work with1 or who lives in the same boarding house with you1 or who comes to visit your sister4 ,men who have escaped the dangers of all other women are the victims of propinquity which unites them to ladies they couldn't otherwise have seen through a telescope4 ,somehow our very nearness to the people with whom we are thrown every day keeps us from getting a perspective on their faults and disabilities1 and habit deceives us into thinking that they are more necessary to us than they are4 ,and so we drift into the mismated marriages that keep the divorce courts busy and the world salted down with the brine of our tears4 ,therefore1 if you perceive that ,mamie1 whom you thought vulgar at first1 no longer gets on your nerves2 if you observe that ,sadie1 who bored you when you first met her1 is beginning to interest you with her chatter about what 8he said0 and 8,i said10 and you discover that you have quit being shocked by ,carrie's gum-chewing and ,mabel's grammar1 then1 son1 pack your trunk and leave while the leaving is good4 ,otherwise1 the ,girl ,next to ,you will get you sure4 ,but why amplify the list8 ,some day a girl will tag you1 and you will know you are 8it10 and a million warnings could not save you from your fate4 ,,lvii ,,when ,a ,,girl ,,loves ,a ,,man ,a youth asks me how he can tell whether a girl loves him or not4 ,well1 son1 you can't always tell4 ,there are times when all signs fail1 and there is no man so clever1 so discerning1 so sophisticated that a woman cannot fool him if she set her mind to doing so4 ,for the many generations in which women were entirely subservient to men1 and in which they had to get everything they had out of men1 and in which all their pleasures and perquisites depended on their wheedling and cajoling men1 have made them gifted liars and adept at befooling men4 ,however1 the modern girl1 being able to make her own living1 and stand upon her own feet1 and therefore being to a large degree independent of men1 has less need to simulate emotions which she does not feel1 and so she has lost the fine technique of her mother and her grandmother and her great-great-great grandmother4 ,flirting has become a lost art1 and the methods of the gold-digger are so crude and raw that any man who is taken in by one deserves all he gets4 ,the average girl is almost brutally frank about the state of her feelings4 ,she hasn't even subtlety enough about her to keep a man guessing4 ,but there is1 of course1 a sort of no-man's land that lies between liking and loving in which the girl wanders1 herself as uncertain and bewildered as you are4 ,and1 ,i take it1 it is across this dangerous terrain that you wish to be guided4 ,sally is dear and sweet to you4 ,she apparently enjoys your society1 and you never have any trouble in making dates with her4 ,she is the best little pal ever4 ,but what you want to know is whether she cares for you just as she does for half a dozen other chaps1 or whether you are the ,,only ,,one4 ,first1 ,is she willing to sit at home of an evening with you or not8 ,if she comes down with her hat on to receive you1 or if she always wants to step out somewhere1 you have not touched her heart4 ,she regards you merely as a purveyor of good times1 a theater ticket and a dancing partner1 and any other youth who had the price would do as well4 ,but things have got serious with her when she proposes to spend the evening at home under a pink-shaded lamp4 ,that shows that she has begun to live a romance with more thrills to it than anything she can see depicted on the stage1 and that she thinks that ,valentino is a poor dub at love-making compared to you4 ,also it indicates that she desires to isolate you1 to cut you out from the herd and put her brand upon you4 ,cupid is essentially a monopolist4 ,especially the ,lady ,cupid4 ,the first thing that a woman does when she falls in love with a man is to try to shut him away from all other women4 ,so long as a girl wants to go in crowds there is nothing doing with her in the love line4 ,if she really cares for you1 she will maneuver to get you off to herself4 ,next4 ,observe how a girl treats your pocketbook4 ,if she gets everything out of you that she can2 if1 when you go out1 she has to have a taxi to convey her three blocks1 although she can walk ten miles around a department store without turning a hair2 if she always suggests orchids when flowers are mentioned1 and invariably picks out the most expensive places to dance and the highest-priced dishes on the menu1 you may be certain that she has no serious intentions concerning you4 ,you are merely the good thing that a merciful ,providence has brought forward for her sustenance4 ,but when a girl begins to talk economy to a boy2 when she suggests going to the movies instead of to the theatre2 when she orders a ham sandwich instead of a chicken breast and mushrooms under glass1 it is an unmistakable sign that she is regarding his bankroll as her own and is commencing to save up for furniture for her future home4 ,next--and this is an acid test--talk to the girl about yourself and observe her reaction to it4 ,monologue along to her by the hour about what you are doing1 about what you have done in the past and what you expect to do in the future4 ,tell her all about what you said to the boss and what the boss said to you4 ,explain to her all the details of the grocery business4 ,regale her with reminiscences of your childhood1 when you were a fat little boy with green freckles on your hands4 ,if she yawns in your face or if she listens with the expression of a martyr being nailed to the cross2 if she gets up and walks around the room or turns on the radio or interrupts you to ask what you think of the ,president's foreign policy1 you may as well abandon hope4 ,her affection is merely gold plated1 not the real thing4 ,but if she laps up your talk about yourself and asks for more2 if she begs you to repeat that darling story of how naughty you were to your nurse1 and if she sits1 goggle-eyed with excitement1 on the edge of her chair while you relate how you sold a bill of goods to a hard customer1 rest assured that her heart is yours for keeps4 ,for there are only two women in the world1 a man's mother and the woman who is his wife or hopes to be his wife1 who want to hear him talk about himself4 ,take note also of a girl's attitude toward you4 ,as long as she regards you as an intelligent1 husky1 able-bodied man1 capable of taking care of yourself and with sense enough to come in out of the rain1 her regard for you is merely platonic4 ,but when a girl suddenly becomes anxious about the state of your health1 when she worries over your getting your feet wet and is afraid you are not getting enough vitamines in your diet1 when she warns you not to forget to put on your overcoat if it is cold and to look out for automobiles when you cross the street1 then it is safe to begin pricing engagement rings4 ,of course1 there are other signs of love1 such as a girl developing an acute attack of domesticity and passing up the display of ,french frocks in a window for that of aluminum pots and pans1 and especially when she begins dragging a man to church with her1 which are not to be ignored4 ,but when a maiden begins to mother a chap and indicates that her idea of spending a perfectly hilarious evening is just to be alone with him1 listening to him talk about himself1 she is his for the taking4 ,,lviii ,,marriage ,,lessons ,what has marriage taught you8 8,the chief thing that marriage has taught me10 said a man who has had forty years of experience in matrimony1 8is that women are human beings4 ,when a man acquires that piece of information it always gives him a bit of a jolt1 for most men never really think of women as human beings at all4 ,they think1 according to their kind1 of women as angels1 above all earthly passions1 with no nerves or tempers1 or selfish cravings for pleasure and who find their joy in life in loving the unlovable and forgiving the unforgivable and being a sweet1 gooey1 sticky mass of gentleness and patience and unselfishness4 ,or they think of women as being baby dolls to be dressed up and played with and put on the shelf when they are tired of them4 ,or they think of women as pieces of household machinery--sort of automatic1 self-starting cooks and carpet sweepers and washers and menders1 who run on their own power and who don't even have to be oiled up with a few lubricating words of praise now and then4 8,and so husbands treat their wives according to their conception of what women are1 and that is why marriage is so often a failure and why there are so many divorces4 ,women don't want to be regarded either as saints or toys or domestic conveniences4 ,they want to be treated as human beings and have their husbands give them the same sort of a square deal a man gives his business partner4 8,about nine-tenths of the spats that married people have are over money4 ,it gets on the husband's nerves to have the woman eternally dunning him for money4 ,it seems to him that before he gets his hat off in the evening she begins asking for a few dollars for this and for that4 ,then the bills come in1 and they are always bigger than he expected1 and he rows about it1 and she thinks that he is stingy4 8,the trouble is that the man isn't treating his wife like a rational human being4 ,he is expecting her to be a miracle worker and run a house on air4 ,he is humiliating her and making her feel that he is a tyrant by making her come like a beggar to him for every penny because he has got an idea that women don't mind panhandling4 ,furthermore1 he is expecting her to gauge her expenditures wisely1 when she hasn't the faintest idea of what her resources are4 8,i have found out that it saves friction over money to make my wife as liberal an allowance as ,i can4 ,i have found out that if you will explain to a woman just exactly how the financial situation stands in the family and why you can't afford the thing she wants she will not only do without it gladly but cut down her expenses in other ways and help you to save4 ,it is believing that their husbands are holding out on them and not splitting fifty-fifty with them that makes women reckless spenders4 8,and ,i have found that a man is a fool who lies to his wife4 ,in the end she always catches up with him1 and then she imagines things ten times worse than they were4 ,if a man telephones his wife that he is going to stay downtown and meet a customer from ,oshkosh and she learns that he really played poker with the boys she pictures a scene of wild debauchery and leaps to the conclusion that he is leading the double life and he never hears the last of it4 ,but if he tells her just what he is going to do she is so flattered at being trusted and thought broadminded enough not to begrudge her husband an evening's pleasure that she goes to bed and goes to sleep instead of waiting up for him with a curtain lecture sizzling in her mind4 8,marriage has taught me that women think more of words than they do of deeds and that a woman would rather have her husband tell her that he loves her than to have him work his fingers to the bone for her and never make her a soft speech4 ,as long as a husband tells his wife how beautiful she is and how he would like to deck her out in diamonds and sables she is perfectly content to do without them and wear hand-me-downs4 ,it is only when she thinks that he doesn't care whether she has fine clothes or not that she gets peevish over not having the finery that other women have4 8,marriage has taught me that in the family circle the hammer is a boomerang that returns and annihilates the hammerer4 ,if you knock your wife's cooking she says1 #8,what's the use of trying to please you8' and makes no effort to improve2 but if you praise her dinners she breaks her neck trying to make them better and better4 ,if you criticize the size of the bills she revenges herself by buying something that really cost money2 but if you tell her what a help she is to you and what a marvelous manager1 she becomes a nickel-nurser4 8,if you find fault with her hat or her dress1 you have to buy her a new one2 but if you tell her how becoming her last year's costume is and how it brings out her lines1 she will wear it into shreds4 ,marriage has taught me that if you let your wife know that you admire her and appreciate her1 that you are grateful to her for all that she does for you and that you try to do all in your power to make her happy1 she will repay you a thousandfold and there is nothing she won't do for you and no fault she won't overlook in you40 ,,lix ,,the ,,superior ,,business ,,woman ,the other day a man killed his beautiful young wife because she was a better 8business man0 than he was and made more money4 ,the woman loved her husband and was good to him4 ,she was ambitious for him4 ,she got him a job with the people for whom she worked and tried to push him along and help him in every way4 ,but it simply was not in him to be the go-getter that she was4 ,she was a success and he was a failure4 ,and in the frenzy of morbid jealousy that this engendered in him1 he slew her4 ,thus vividly do we have brought to our attention one of the new difficulties that the advent of women into the business world has injected into the already complicated matrimonial proposition4 ,it makes the question of how the modern wife can best be a helpmeet to her husband one that takes a ,solomon in petticoats to answer4 ,in olden times the matter was perfectly simple4 ,the woman who wanted to help her husband along had only to be a good and thrifty manager1 to pare the potatoes thin enough and squeeze the nickels4 ,she did her part in building up the family fortunes by saving4 ,but1 in many cases to-day1 the old woman's granddaughter is a crackerjack business woman who sees that she can help her husband more by earning than by scrimping1 and that she can make more money in one year in business than she could save in ten years by doing her own housework and wearing shabby clothes4 ,so1 as long as she is working for their common good1 the woman cannot understand why her husband shouldn't be just as willing for her to help him by working in an office as in a kitchen1 or why the wife who does brain labor isn't as good a wife as the one who does manual labor4 ,but the great majority of women who continue to follow any gainful pursuit after marriage find out that1 while there is a new woman who looks at everything in life from a new angle1 there is no new man4 ,women have changed in their relationship to man1 but men stand pat just where ,adam did when it comes to dealing with women4 ,if you will notice1 it is only women who prate about equality between the sexes4 ,men take no stock in any such heresy4 ,when a man tells a woman that she is an angel and that he looks up to her and worships her1 it is one of the lover's perjuries at which ,jove laughs4 ,in reality he doesn't mean a word of it4 ,the very basic thing on which a man's love for a woman is built is his sense of superiority to her4 ,he wants to feel stronger than she is1 wiser than she is1 to be more successful than she is4 ,she must look up to him1 revere him1 ask his opinion1 be guided by his advice4 ,that is why the clinging-vine type of woman is so appealing to men1 and it is why intelligent1 big-brained men so often marry morons and are happy and contented with them4 ,their silly little wives do not understand one word in five they say and are no companions to them1 but they satisfy the masculine demand to dominate the woman4 ,when the case is reversed1 as it often is1 and when the wife is the more intelligent1 the stronger character--when the gray mare is the better horse and pulls most of the load--the marriage is invariably unhappy1 and the husband almost invariably either openly or secretly hates his wife4 ,his love for her is never strong enough to survive the hurt to his vanity4 ,his sense of inferiority to her keeps his nerves raw1 and if he is dependent upon her it turns his very soul to wormwood and gall4 ,i have never known a woman who supported her husband who received any gratitude for it4 ,he would eat her bread1 but he did it as a snapping dog that bites the hand that feeds it4 ,there is nothing that fills a woman's cup of happiness so full and overflowing as for her husband to achieve a notable success and be great and famous4 ,she glories in being ,mrs4 ,explorer or ,mrs4 ,engineer or ,mrs4 ,banker or ,mrs4 ,author1 and loves to shine in the reflected glory4 ,but the deadliest insult you can offer any man is to speak of him as his wife's husband and call him ,mr4 ,mary ,smith1 although ,mary may have written the book of the year or have performed some achievement that has made the world sit up and take notice of her4 ,perhaps all of this is natural4 ,perhaps this cosmic urge that the male has to dominate the female is something instinctive for which he is not responsible4 ,but it makes the woman's course a hard one to steer1 for1 curiously enough1 the weak man is often attracted to the strong woman1 and there is something maternal in the strong woman that wants to mother the weak man and makes her feel that he only needs her to take care of him and boost him and show him the way to success4 ,so the girl who is making a big salary marries the man who is making a small one1 and she tries to supply for him the business sense he lacks and to galvanize him into a hustle of which he is incapable1 and they live scrappily ever afterward4 ,yet there is nothing we can do about it as long as nature goes blundering along putting the brains and talents of merchants and bankers and trust presidents into a lot of women's heads and making plenty of men who would have been wonderful housekeepers and done perfectly lovely embroidery work if only they hadn't got the wrong sex4 ,,lx ,,new ,,ideals ,,for ,,old ,the strangest thing in this age of strange things is the new relationship that is growing up between the sexes4 ,so many of the ideals that have ruled us for centuries have been scrapped and swept into the discard that the boy and girl babies of to-day are virtually born into a new world where few of the conventions that ruled their parents survive4 ,take the matter of financial independence1 for instance4 ,since the caveman days it has been held that the proper attitude of woman was one of dependence on her lord and master4 ,the woman bore the children and kept the house1 and the husband provided the wherewithal to support the family4 ,when a woman had property her husband took possession of it on the day they were married4 ,virtually every lucrative occupation was barred to women4 ,when a man and a woman went to any place of amusement the man would have been highly insulted if she had offered to pay any part of the cost of the entertainment4 ,man was the purse bearer1 and his lordly gesture indicated that he had the checking account of ,mr4 ,rockefeller and that woman was a dear little sweetie who was not to bother her poor little foolish head over the cost of anything4 ,to-day the majority of women earn their living before they are married4 ,financial independence has become so necessary to their happiness that one of the potent sources of domestic discord is the inability of the woman who has had her own pay envelope to do without it and reconcile herself to taking whatever her husband gives her as recompense for her hard work as a poor man's wife4 ,also husbands are coming more and more to begrudge spending money on their wives and are demanding oftener and oftener that the wage-earning girls they marry shall keep on with their jobs4 ,likewise1 it is a common thing for the young women who go out with young men to places of amusement to pay their own way and go fifty-fifty on all expenses4 ,this may be fair enough4 ,certainly1 when men and women work side by side and the woman gets the same salary as the man there is no more reason why he should feed her and buy her theater tickets than why she should buy his4 ,perhaps it is only logical that when woman fought for and won financial independence she should have to pay the price of her victory4 ,but what ,i am trying to show is that man's attitude toward woman as regards money has changed4 ,she has shown that she can make her own living and he lets her do it4 ,even fathers have now no such sense of responsibility about providing for their daughters as they used to have4 ,men no longer adopt the gallant 8,i'll-pay-your-way0 pose4 ,they treat women about money as they would treat another man4 ,of course1 the occupation of wifehood and motherhood is a strenuous one and is all that any woman can be expected to do properly1 but it is becoming more and more evident that men are less willing to support their families and that in the future women are going to have to continue to be wage-earners even after they are married4 ,another curious shift of masculine thought is about feminine modesty4 ,in the past1 no matter what a man's own life might have been1 he demanded unsullied innocence in the woman he married4 ,his ideal was the shrinking violet1 the bud with the dew upon it4 ,in these days there are few peaches with the down still left upon them4 ,they have nearly all been manhandled4 ,girls display their bodies with an abandon that would have made the most hardened woman blush fifty years ago4 ,debutantes tell stories that would paralyze their grandmothers if they could hear them4 ,young women think no more of kissing every ,tom1 ,dick and ,harry who comes along and in indulging in petting parties and 8necking10 than their mothers would have thought of shaking hands and holding a casual conversation4 ,girls excuse themselves for indulging in these dangerous and degrading practises by saying that unless they do they receive no attention from men4 ,they speak the truth4 ,men may still theoretically admire what they call 8the old-fashioned girl10 but they leave her to spend her evenings with her parents4 ,few men in these days can hope to marry a girl who has not been kissed and pawed over1 and so it is obvious that men are changing their opinions about the desirability of modesty in women and establishing a single standard of conduct for both sexes4 ,that is just1 but it does not make for morality or the uplift of humanity4 ,men and women both approach marriage in a different spirit4 ,in the back of most young people's heads as they march to the altar is the thought that if they don't like it they won't stick to it4 ,it is an experiment1 and they will try anything once1 and if it doesn't come up to what the novelists and poets have press-agented it to be they can always fly to the divorce court4 ,that is one reason why marriage is so often a failure4 ,neither husband nor wife makes an honest effort to make a success of it4 ,of course1 there are exceptions to all rules4 ,there are husbands who gladly support their families2 there are girls who have kept themselves unsullied and their lips virginal2 there are men and women who still hold marriage a sacrament4 ,but for the great majority of men and women there are new ideals and a new attitude toward each other4 ,and whether these are better or worse than the old only time can tell4 ,,lxi ,,why ,,divorce ,,is ,,common ,when we hear about a couple getting a divorce on the grounds of incompatibility of temper we instinctively feel that it is too trivial a reason for breaking up a home and we condemn them as poor sports who did not have enough grit to carry on and make the best of their bargain4 ,if it had been something big1 now--drunkenness1 the drug habit1 infidelity--if the husband had been a brute who beat his wife1 or the wife a virago1 we could have sympathized with them4 ,but just to get a divorce because they didn't think alike on politics and religion and hadn't the same taste in pie4 ,pooh6 ,quitters4 ,a yellow streak4 ,we've no pity for them4 ,yet when you come to think of it1 is there really anything else in the whole wide world that comes so near to justifying divorce as incompatibility of temper8 ,is there any other such good reason for a man and woman parting and going their separate ways as the fact that they have not one thought or desire or interest in common8 ,and is there any other torture comparable with having to live in intimate daily contact with a person who continually rubs your fur the wrong way1 who gets on your nerves1 who rasps your sensibilities and keeps you in a perpetual bad humor8 ,it is a lot easier to forgive an occasional big fault than it is to put up with never-ending petty irritations4 ,the big sinners at least take a day off from their vices now and then1 but the little sinners who sin against our habits and ideals and conventions are always on the job4 ,so when you think of this and consider the difficulties there are in the way of every man and woman who get married adjusting themselves to each other1 you are not surprised that divorce is so common4 ,you only wonder that it isn't universal4 ,here are two persons of different sexes1 doomed by nature to look at everything from different standpoints and to react differently to every situation4 ,back of them is a different heredity1 often a different race4 ,in their veins flow alien currents of blood4 ,they have been brought up with different standards1 in different schools of thought4 ,different habits have been bred in them4 ,they worship different gods and at different altars and eat different dishes4 ,what marvel that such a couple come to grief on the rocks of incompatibility of temper6 ,the miracle of it is that any of them have the wit and wisdom to steer around it4 ,but the terrible and pathetic thing about it is that in hundreds of these cases in which husbands and wives live a cat-and-dog life and make each other perfectly miserable1 or else break their marriage vows1 nobody is really to blame4 ,each is perfectly right from his or her standpoint1 only they can't agree4 ,they can't adjust themselves to each other4 ,the woman who has been brought up in a happy-go-lucky household1 where the only use any one saw for a dollar was to spend it as quickly as possible1 where meals were movable feasts that were as likely to happen at one hour as another1 is a thorn in the side of a husband who has been trained from his youth up to make a fetich of thrift1 order and promptness4 ,on the other hand1 the woman whose mother has brought her up to make a sacred rite of cleanliness and who scrubs the back of every kitchen shelf and regards a chair out of place or ashes on the rug as a high crime and misdemeanor1 is fretted into nervous prostration by a husband who never can be taught to wipe his feet on the doormat or kept from mussing up the best sofa cushion4 ,there are women who die of broken hearts1 frozen to death by the coldness of their husbands4 ,they have come from warm-hearted1 demonstrative families4 ,they have been accustomed to having a fuss made over them and to seeing their father's loverlike attentions to their mother1 and they think that their husbands do not love them1 because they never tell them so4 ,they cannot understand the dumb1 repressed temperament that is utterly incapable of showing what it feels4 ,then there is the gay1 pleasure-loving man who likes to dance and dine in restaurants and jazz2 the good fellow whom everybody likes and who has holes in his pockets that no wife's economy can ever sew up4 ,what superhuman wisdom and patience it takes in a woman to keep from nagging him if she has been brought up in an austere family that frowned on all frivolous amusements and whose watchword was duty instead of good times6 ,then there is the eternal conflict over little trivial personal habits and ways1 over things as small as cooking4 ,irvin ,cobb said once that the ,civil ,war was fought not over secession or slavery but over hot bread and cold bread4 ,certainly many thirty or forty-year family wars are waged over what strength the breakfast coffee shall be and the use of onions in the soup4 ,and certainly it is no trivial matter for one accustomed to a sophisticated1 highly cultured cuisine to have to insult your palate with plain1 ignorant1 boiled food because the partner of your bosom has had his or her early education in eating neglected4 ,probably no woman who has been reared in the belief that one's good clothes should be kept for company and that any sort of old messy duds were good enough for home consumption can realize the disgust she inspires in her husband's breast when she comes down to breakfast in a boudoir cap and a soiled kimono and no complexion if he is of the fastidious sort to whom slovenliness is a mortal sin4 ,these little things--the niceties of life that one has been taught to observe and the other hasn't1 the order and thrift one has been bred to and the other hasn't1 the difference in point of view1 in taste1 in habit--make the inevitable friction between husbands and wives which is at the bottom of almost every divorce4 ,and when you think how hard it is to give up our old opinions and ways of doing things1 the wonder is that so many persons are able to do it and that so many couples do adjust themselves to each other and get along in reasonable peace and harmony4 ,,lxii ,,the ,,children ,,pay ,no disinterested outsider ever observes the spats in which so many husbands and wives continually engage without realizing that they quarrel because they enjoy doing so4 ,it is an indoor sport out of which they get a morbid thrill4 ,domestic life has become dull and monotonous to them4 ,they have nothing new and interesting to say to each other1 and so one or the other starts something by making a remark that he or she knows is the fighting word that will inevitably precipitate a scrimmage4 ,and then they go to it1 hammer and tongs4 ,it is their way of putting pep into a pepless day1 for they know the danger they are running1 and the very fact that they are risking their whole life's happiness crisps their nerves1 as going over the top did the soldiers in the war4 ,besides which they get a strange and savage joy out of stabbing with cruel words and in wounding and being wounded by the ones they love and who love them4 ,it is because married couples love a fight for the fight's sake that so many homes are nothing but a battlefield on which a perpetual warfare goes on4 ,otherwise the dove of peace would roost on the roof of many a household to which the black flag is now nailed4 ,for it is folly to say that the average husband and wife who are forever engaged in an acrimonious debate over every trifle that comes up could not get along with each other if they desired to do so4 ,they get along with other persons4 ,they make allowance for the prejudices and faults of others4 ,they permit other persons to differ from them on matters of opinion and taste4 ,they sidestep other persons' peculiarities4 ,they control their tempers and their tongues when they are dealing with others4 ,they are tactful and diplomatic in handling other persons4 ,no doctor would ever have another patient1 no merchant another customer1 no man could hold his job if he was as irritable1 as grouchy1 as high tempered abroad as many a man is at home1 and if he said the insulting things to other persons that he says to his wife4 ,no woman would ever be invited to another bridge party or elected president of the sewing society if she were as much of a spitfire in public as many a woman is in private1 and if she said the nasty things to others that she says to her husband4 ,now1 the rules for keeping the peace are the same everywhere1 and both men and women are familiar with them4 ,every man knows that there isn't a woman living that he can't make eat out of his hand by showing her a few attentions1 a little tenderness and consideration and paying her a few compliments4 ,every woman knows that there isn't a man that she can't jolly along the way she wants him to go and who does not respond to judiciously applied salve4 ,so when husbands and wives1 who know perfectly well how to work each other without friction1 deliberately and with malice aforethought rub each other the wrong way1 it is obviously because they enjoy their daily dozen fracases and find fun in seeing the fur fly4 ,if that were the end of it1 we might well shrug our shoulders and1 while wondering at their taste1 leave them to take their pleasure as they saw fit in the cruel pastime of baiting each other4 ,but1 unfortunately1 the family spat is not the innocent diversion that husbands and wives appear to think it is1 nor does it end when the husband puts on his hat and bangs the door behind him and goes downtown1 and the wife wipes away a tear or two and goes about her daily tasks4 ,the children are the real victims in these family fights4 ,it is they who stumble from the domestic battleground with shattered nerves1 with torn and bleeding spirits and souls1 with maimed and deformed characters4 ,all of us have known children who have taken to the streets almost as soon as they could walk to escape homes that were full of bickering and discord4 ,we have seen how little control the fathers and mothers who could not control their own tempers had over their children1 and we have not wondered when truant officers tell us that nine-tenths of the wayward girls and hoodlum boys are the children of divorced parents1 or else1 of parents who did not get along together4 ,now comes a great psychiatrist who asserts that he has never known an instance of nervous breakdown in the children of happily married parents who were brought up in a peaceful home4 ,read that over again4 ,memorize it1 you fathers and mothers who begin the day by having a row at the breakfast table because the coffee isn't just as you like it or the toast is burnt or you neglected to send up the coal yesterday and forgot to leave the money for the milkman4 ,you think it is of no consequence because your wife knows you don't mean half of what you say and she is fighting back more from force of habit than anything else4 ,but neither one of you gives a thought to the children who are listening to it all1 to the children who are learning to regard you with contempt1 who are having all their illusions shattered2 whom you are teaching to be bitter and misanthropic1 with no faith in anything beautiful or fine4 ,you do not realize that you may not only be giving them a warp in character that will bar them from success in life1 but that you may be actually dooming them to a breakdown that will make them wrecks in body and mind4 ,isn't that a pretty high price to pay for the pleasure of quarreling8 ,and isn't it a cruelly unfair thing to force your children to settle your score8 ,for the sake of the children you brought into the world and for whom you are responsible1 isn't it worth while to deny yourself the pleasure of finding fault with your husband or wife and saying all the mean1 acrimonious things you can think of8 ,no use in saying that you can't get along together4 ,you can1 if you want to4 ,you get along with other persons4 ,,lxiii ,,the ,,learned ,,profession ,,of ,,home-,,making ,no complaint is more general--possibly no belief is more prevalent among women--than that a woman of intelligence wastes her energies and her abilities in being merely a housekeeper4 ,following the domestic arts is a despised calling1 held in such contempt by the majority of women that they never take the trouble to achieve success in it2 and yet there is no other occupation under the sun that requires so many and such varied talents as does the learned profession of home-making4 ,did you ever think what a woman must be in order to create and carry on a happy and prosperous home8 ,she must be a financier4 ,there can be no peace and pleasure in a home where the wolf is always howling under the window and the bill collector hammering on the door4 ,there are1 of course1 a few men in every community who are such gifted money-makers that they can annex more coin than any woman can spend1 but for the great mass of ordinary1 industrious1 hard-working humanity the wife settles the financial status of the family4 ,it is her ability to handle money1 her knowledge of where to spend and where to economize1 her knack of making a dollar buy a hundred and five cents' worth and get a blue trading stamp thrown in to boot1 that is at the foundation of every prosperous home4 ,we don't hear anything about it1 because the woman doesn't know herself how awfully clever she is1 but the majority of women in this country are doing marvels of financiering in the way they make both ends meet in their housekeeping allowance1 and keep up appearances1 that entitle them to qualify in the ,rockefeller class4 ,she must be a general4 ,she must know how to command4 ,she must know how to set all the multitudinous wheels of household machinery in motion and be able to keep them moving without friction4 ,she must be able to enforce obedience1 inspire enthusiasm1 plan campaigns1 forestall her enemy1 be fertile in expedient and subtle in strategy4 ,any woman who maintains a comfortable and well-ordered home1 the kind of a house that we like to visit1 and who raises a nice family and marries her daughters off well could give the commander-in-chief of the army points on generalship4 ,she must be a diplomat4 ,the husband question1 the children question and the servant question are not to be handled without gloves4 ,there is no hour of the day that she is not called upon to deal with some problem that requires the finesse of a ,talleyrand4 ,she must be able1 if the white-winged dove of peace is to brood over the home nest1 to deal with her husband's prejudices and circumvent them so delicately that he will never know that he is being induced to do the thing that he swore he would never1 never do4 ,she must assert her authority over the growing boy with such cunning that he does not perceive that her fine ,italian hand is on the check rein holding him tight and steady4 ,she must be able1 without the girls dreaming that she does it1 to insinuate a doubt1 drop a word of ridicule1 imply an impossibility that will keep her daughters out of entangling alliances and steer them toward the reciprocally profitable permanent treaties they should make4 ,above all1 she must be able to see most when she is apparently stone blind2 hear everything when she seems to be as deaf as the adder of the ,scriptures2 to be most on guard when she looks to be sleeping at her post1 and to be most chaperoning her daughters when the onlooker and the girls themselves would swear that she was most giving them their liberty4 ,she must know how to tread very softly if she keeps off the corns of her servants1 for whether a woman is agreeable or disagreeable in the home her children are bound to stay there with her1 but it is the blessed privilege of ,mary ,ann and ,bridget and eke of ,hulda and ,dinah that they can pack their trunks and go4 ,only the very quintessence of diplomacy renders a mistress persona grata to the kitchen1 and the woman who preserves friendly relations with that must understand the ,alpha and ,omega of how to make a jolly cover the discipline of a martinet4 ,any woman who1 when she is fifty years old1 has a husband who thinks her a ,solomon in petticoats1 grown children who quote mother's opinion1 and a cook who has been with her five years is fitted to be ,ambassador ,extraordinary and ,minister ,plenipotentiary at the ,court of ,st4 ,james's1 and nothing but the stupidity of a nation that believes that breeches and brains are synonymous terms keeps her out of the job4 ,she must be an artist4 ,it is the woman's province to create the beauty of the home4 ,this is true whether it is the palace of the millionaire or the three-room flat of the day laborer4 ,every room that she arranges is a picture1 just as much as if she painted a ,dutch interior on canvas4 ,she must be a poet4 ,a home is not merely a place of shelter and food--it is a thing no less of the spirit and soul--and a woman must put into it the passion of her heart and the joy of creating just as truly as a poet must put them into his song4 ,to make a home that is beautiful1 that breathes the spirit of home1 that is a haven of peace and rest to those who live in it and that is a glimpse of ,paradise to the stranger who is bidden within its gates is a profession the most exacting in which any woman can engage and the one that calls for the greatest number of talents4 ,also it is the most profitable1 for within it are made the men and women who go forth to bless the world4 ,and the wonder of wonders is that so many just plain ordinary women are doing it1 and the greatest marvel of all is that they do not realize what a glorious thing they are doing6 ,,lxiv ,a ,,father',s ,,influence ,there is no subject under the sun of which men take such a distorted view as they do of a mother's influence4 ,romancers have glorified it1 poets have idealized it1 musicians have sung it until men have honestly come to think that mothers have a practical monopoly of their children and the sole duty and privilege of shaping their lives4 ,even fathers seem to think that fathers count for nothing and that all they are good for is paying the bills4 ,in the family circle they take a back seat and let mother run the show4 ,it is ,mother's ,day that is celebrated with pomp and flowers and beating the cymbals4 ,nobody notices ,father's ,day--perhaps because the first of the month is always ,father's ,day and it comes around so often4 ,no one would belittle mother's influence4 ,for good or evil it is all powerful4 ,but it is all powerful because father is so often too stupid or too lazy or too careless or too much absorbed in his business to do his duty to his children by helping to mold their characters4 ,he dodges his responsibility4 ,he passes the buck to mother and salves his conscience with a platitude about a mother's sacred influence1 which in his innermost self he recognizes for the hokum it is4 ,for mother's influence does not always work for righteousness4 ,motherhood works no miracles4 ,bearing a baby does not put brains and wisdom in a hen-minded woman's head4 ,it does not give a shallow woman depth4 ,it does not make a narrow1 prejudiced woman broad and tolerant4 ,it does not make a fool woman wise4 ,yet all around us we see men who would not trust their wives' judgment about anything else on earth1 turning over to them their children's immortal souls4 ,they know their wives to be silly and ignorant--without vision1 without the ability to see or understand anything beyond their own little circle--yet they let these morons shape their children's lives4 ,they let them form their children's ideals and set their standards4 ,they let them decide on the schools their children shall attend1 the churches they shall join1 the people with whom they associate4 ,yet the very men who trust their children to weak and incompetent and unintelligent wives to rear would not dream of permitting a weak1 incompetent1 unintelligent partner to run their business4 ,they are too well aware of the value of their personal advice and supervision and of the need of their strong and expert hands on the wheel4 ,men blindly subscribe to the faith that a mother's influence is bound to be good1 especially upon her daughters1 yet a moment's thought would show them how fallacious such a belief is4 ,a woman can only give out what she has4 ,she can only try to make her daughters what she is4 ,and unless a man wants his daughters to be just the sort of woman their mother is1 he cannot safely leave them in her hands4 ,it is true that there are not many women who deliberately bring up their girls to be immoral and start their feet on the downward path4 ,but there are thousands upon thousands of mothers whose influence upon their daughters is vicious1 because they inculcate in them their own low ideals of honor and honesty4 ,they teach them by precept and example to evade every duty of wifehood and motherhood1 and from their very infancy up they instil into them a greed and selfishness that wrecks the happiness of all who come in contact with them4 ,such are the mothers who teach their daughters how to lie and cheat1 how to buy on credit the finery they cannot afford1 how to kill a man with their extravagance4 ,such mothers are those whose favorite maxim is that what a husband doesn't know doesn't hurt him4 ,such a mother is the one who1 not long ago1 ,i heard say to her young daughter who was getting married3 8,don't tie yourself down with babies4 ,go about and amuse yourself and have a good time1 and if your husband doesn't like it he can lump it40 ,when a man has that kind of a wife--and no man can be so afflicted without knowing it--he does a criminal thing when he leaves his girls to their mother's influence4 ,it is his bounden duty to use his influence to correct hers as far as possible4 ,little as men seem to realize it1 children nearly always listen with far more respect to what their fathers say than they do to what their mothers say4 ,for the child knows intuitively that the father has had a broader experience of life than the mother has4 ,it knows that the father goes out into the world and does battle with it every day and that he knows from experience the things about which mother vaguely theorizes4 ,it knows that father knows the rules and how to play the game4 ,hence when a man really makes any attempt to develop his children's characters he finds them as clay in his hands1 ready to respond to his slightest touch4 ,it is only when father merely uses his influence as a veto power that it is negligible4 ,that a boy needs his father's hand in directing and controlling him at the critical time of his life and a father's wisdom to steer him along the right course is universally recognized1 but ,i often think that a girl needs it even more4 ,for a girl needs to be taught the things that life teaches a man4 ,she needs to be taught to be straightforward and honest and to live up to her contracts1 that she must give as well as take in life and that she must have the courage and the grit to carry on when things are hard instead of turning quitter and to make the best of a bad bargain4 ,many a divorce would have been avoided and many a home that is now broken up1 kept intact if a father's influence over his little girl had made her a good sport1 instead of mother's influence developing a yellow streak in her4 ,a mother's influence is a great thing1 but it needs to be backed up by father's4 ,that is why ,god gave every child two parents instead of one4 ,,lxv ,,the ,,riches ,,of ,,poor ,,children ,the bitterest cry of poor people is that they have nothing to give their children4 ,the fathers and mothers who cannot buy imported finery for their girls or sports-model cars for their boys and send them off to expensive colleges and fill their pockets with money feel that they have come empty-handed to their children and have nothing to give them4 ,yet the poorest man and woman who bend above a cradle have it in their power to bestow upon their babe treasures so great that their worth cannot be computed in dollars and cents1 and that will bring the child more pleasure and happiness in life than they could purchase with all the wealth of the ,rothschilds4 ,for there is no price tag on the most precious things in the world4 ,they are equally free to prince and pauper1 and more often the beggar gets them than the millionaire does4 ,for example1 there is love--a close1 intimate1 personal association--and tenderness and understanding4 ,poor parents can more easily give to their children than the wealthy can4 ,and the child that has them is rich beyond the dreams of avarice1 and the child that has them not is poverty-stricken1 although it has all else besides4 ,the mother who rocks her baby to sleep on her breast1 whose tender arms are always outstretched to gather her youngsters to her heart1 who is never too tired or too busy to listen to childish confidences1 who surrounds her little ones with a brooding atmosphere of affection1--gives to her children far more than does the rich mother who gives her children nurses and governesses and pony carts and fine clothes and costly playthings but who does not give them herself2 who bestows on them everything but the things that a child wants most and needs most--mother love and tenderness1 the real mother touch4 ,not long ago a very rich young man figured in a disgraceful scandal1 and the one excuse offered in his defense was that his mother was dead and his father had never given him anything except money4 ,he had never had any affection bestowed upon him4 ,he had had no parental guidance4 ,when a little lad he had been put in a school and kept there without even being visited by any one who loved him1 without even going home for vacations4 ,he had been just a pitiful little millionaire waif for whom nobody cared4 ,the lot of such a child is infinitely worse than that of the one whose parents are in such humble circumstances that they can give it perhaps only the plainest of food and clothes1 but who do give it a real home that is full of close1 warm family life4 ,the fathers and mothers to whom children are grateful and whose memories they revere are not those who bequeath them great fortunes1 but those who leave them the memory of a love and understanding that never failed and of a childhood that was made sweet by their parents' cherishing4 ,no matter how poor you are1 you can give your children love and companionship and the privilege of growing up in a peaceful and cheerful home1 and that is something that few rich parents can give their children4 ,another gift that you can make your children is that of teaching them how to read4 ,when you do that you really don't need to do much more for them1 because you have put a magic coin in their hands that will buy them entrance into all the doors of delight and open to them all of the portals of romance4 ,no one who loves to read can ever be bored or lonely4 ,he or she has only to open a book1 and1 presto1 he or she has for company all of the wit and wisdom of the ages4 ,gay adventures1 beautiful ladies and gallant gentlemen beckon1 and one has only to follow them into realms of enchantment4 ,all of interest1 all that informs1 that thrills1 that amuses1 is the property of the reader4 ,but1 reading does not always come by nature1 as ,dogberry thought it did4 ,often it has to be acquired by art1 but any child can be taught to like to read2 it can be given the reading habit1 and no other gift can possibly be bestowed upon it that is half so valuable or that will bring it in such happiness or that will be such an ark of refuge to it in times of trouble4 ,another gift that the poorest parents can make to their children is to teach them how to see4 ,most persons go through the world as blind as bats4 ,they never see anything that isn't directly under their noses1 and thereby they miss half of the fun and pleasure in living4 ,there are men and women to whom a sunset is just a phenomenon of nature that happens every day2 to whom a crowd is just a jam of people2 who get nothing out of travel but inconvenience and missing the particular kind of breakfast food they prefer1 and who loathe rain because they get their feet wet and hate snow because it is messy4 ,and there are other men and women who see the glory of ,god in every flaming sunset2 who thrill to the finger tips at the drama they see enacted in every crowd2 to whom travel opens up a new world2 to whom every rain is a symphony and every snowstorm a poem4 ,which of these get the most out of life--those who see or those who are blind2 those who can get pleasure out of little things or those who are too dull and dumb to amuse themselves2 those who are sensitive to every beauty in nature1 who appreciate music and art and literature1 who get the last flavor out of good cooking1 or those who find everything flat and stale and uninteresting because they have never been taught to see the under side of things8 ,finally1 the poorest parents can teach their children that brave attitude toward life without which all the balance is cinders1 ashes1 and dust4 ,for disappointments and trouble come to us all1 and it is only those who have been taught how to make the best of their bad bargains1 how to laugh at misfortune and mock at fate1 who achieve any real happiness in life4 ,so cheer up1 you parents who complain that you have nothing to give your children4 ,you can give them love4 ,you can teach them to read and to see things4 ,you can give them a brave heart4 ,these gifts are worth more than money4 ,and nobody can take them away from those who have them4 ,,lxvi ,a ,,man',s ,,right ,,to ,,his ,,home ,it is a matter of continual wonder to me that women do not realize how unjustly they treat their husbands about their homes4 ,of course1 a woman's home is her castle and all that1 and it is right and proper that she should be the ruler of it4 ,moreover1 inasmuch as the average man is in his home only a very few of his waking hours1 while his wife spends practically all of her time in it1 it is more important that it should come up to her ideal and fire her fancy than his4 ,she should have the right of choice in selecting the neighborhood she desires to live in1 because she has to know the people next door and look across the street all day1 and he doesn't4 ,nor should any mere husband presume to dictate about the number1 size1 and arrangements of the closets in a house that is going to be his wife's workshop4 ,nor should a man interfere with his wife's taste in decoration1 no matter how much it runs to putting ruffled petticoats on the furniture and installing forests of floor lamps1 for having a home dolled up as she wants it1 fills a woman with a great and exceeding peace and joy1 and no good husband should withhold this pleasure from his wife4 ,but all that does not give the wife the right to monopolize the home and use it for her sole behoof and benefit1 as so many women think it does4 ,the man who pays the freight1 the man who buys the house and who supports it1 should have a few poor1 simple privileges in it which even a wife should recognize and respect4 ,he should at least1 in all common fairness1 have the status of a star boarder in the home his money keeps a going concern4 ,he seldom does1 however4 ,there is not one home in a thousand where the man of the house has even a room of his own which he can furnish in accordance with his own taste and where he can mess around as much as he likes4 ,i have known many men who tried to establish dens for themselves in their houses1 but before they got fairly settled1 with their collections of stamps or fishing rods or stuffed animals or what-not disposed around them1 their wives decided that it would be just the place for a sewing room or the nursery4 ,three hooks in a closet and a couple of drawers in a chiffonier are about all most men get for their private use in their homes1 and at that they generally find that their wives and daughters have superimposed feminine fripperies over their best suits and parked their silk stockings on top of their shirts4 ,so universal is the feeling among women they have a right to the entire house that when a wife does concede an easy chair and a reading lamp to her husband she boasts of it loudly and calls everybody's attention to her unusual and generous gesture1 whereat all marvel4 ,and even her husband himself puffs out his chest and feels that he is a pampered household pet4 ,why women should feel that they have an exclusive right to exercise the hospitality of the home nobody knows1 but they do4 ,if you will observe you will see that in most homes it is the wife's family who are perpetually billeted in the spare bedroom1 while the husband's family makes few and occasional visits4 ,you will also observe that there are ten men who have their mothers-in-law living with them to one man whose mother resides under his roof4 ,any wife would think it very mean in him if her husband did not extend a cordial welcome to ,aunt ,sally and ,cousin ,sue when they were invited for a visit and if he wasn't willing to have her pretty young sister come and stay indefinitely in town with them so as to have the benefits of the city4 ,and she expects him to register great joy when her mother telegraphs that she is coming for a month or two4 ,but it is another pair of sleeves when it comes to a husband's relatives1 and there are precious few men who would dare to dump a bunch of their kinspeople on their wives4 ,many a man is afraid to ask even his own mother to come to see him4 ,the average husband would fall dead with surprise if his wife ever intimated to him that she considered the fact that he paid for the rent and food and light and heat and general upkeep of the home gave him just as much right to have his family stay with them as she had to have hers4 ,as to the friends who come to the house1 the wife considers it her prerogative to settle that little matter by herself and thinks that her husband has nothing to do with it4 ,she spreads the mat with 8,welcome0 on it for those she likes and slams and bolts the door in the faces of those she doesn't fancy4 ,and she practically never fancies her husband's old friends4 ,so the man who had looked forward to having his old friends in his new home1 who had dreamed of long talks with ,tom by his fireside and to having ,bob1 who was closer than a brother1 drop in at any time for pot-luck finds1 somehow1 not only that they do not come1 but that he is afraid to ask them to come4 ,wives are always complaining that their husbands are not willing to stay at home4 ,perhaps the remedy is making the home a democracy instead of an autocracy4 ,if men had more rights and privileges at home they might like staying in it better4 ,,lxvii ,,devouring ,,friends 8,one of the greatest pests in the world is what ,i call the devouring friend10 said a woman the other day4 8,she is a bloodthirsty cannibal who gobbles you up alive1 and you have no way of protecting yourself against her1 because the sacred name of friendship bars the use of all the lethal weapons that you can use in defending yourself against other bores and social nuisances4 8,of course1 the common or garden variety of devouring friend is the one who literally eats you out of house and home4 ,she is a self-invited guest who drops you a little note saying that she is passing through your city or that she has to have a little dental work done or wants to consult a doctor or do some shopping1 and she does so pine to see her darling ,susan and talk over old times1 and will it be convenient for her to come and spend a few days with you8 ,all of which being translated simply means that she desires to graft a hotel bill off you4 8,anyway1 she comes and camps in your spare room by the week1 because she always manages to string out the dental work or the appointments with the doctor or the milliner4 ,she should worry4 ,for she is having a good time at no expense4 ,furthermore1 by hints and insinuations she inveigles your husband into taking her to places of amusement that you have not felt that you could afford even when there were only two of you to pay for4 ,and she runs your grocery bill up to the skies because she develops a taste for the most expensive food4 ,and as you see her calmly consuming the price of your new dress you know exactly how a cornfield feels when a swarm of seven-year locusts settles down on it and goes into action4 8,then there are the devouring friends who eat up your time4 ,i am a busy woman4 ,i cannot afford to waste a minute4 ,unfortunately for me1 ,i have a number of women friends who are rich and whose principal occupation in life is killing time4 ,now1 these women know perfectly well that ,i not only do all of my own housework but that ,i make my children's clothes and that if they kill a morning for me they upset my whole schedule and make my work pile up upon me so that my labor is twice as hard4 8,but does that keep them from interrupting me8 ,lord1 no4 ,every time ,maud has a spat with her mother-in-law she will drop over and spend a whole morning giving me all the harrowing details4 ,every time ,lulu's husband gives her a new limousine ,i have to waste hours of my valuable time listening to a minute description of all its splendor4 ,every time ,sallie and ,susie want to be sympathized with or want to brag about their children they ruin the heart of a day's work for me by backing me up against a wall and making me listen4 ,and a dozen times a day ,i am interrupted by women who call me up over the telephone to hold long and fruitless conversations about nothing4 8,yet there is no possible way to protect my precious time against these friends who eat it up4 ,they are all charming women4 ,they like me and ,i like them4 ,i want to retain their friendship1 so ,i cannot shut my door in their faces when they come to see me4 ,i can't ask them to leave when they stay too long4 ,i can't ring off when they call me over the telephone4 ,i can't even say #8damn' aloud1 no matter how much ,i am thinking it4 ,but ,i know what the cynic meant when he said that if ,god would save him from his friends he would protect himself from his enemies4 8,then there are the devouring friends who swallow up all of your home life4 ,my husband's business is such that he has only one or two evenings at home a week4 ,we would like to have these to ourselves to keep up our acquaintance or to go out on a little spree together4 ,we have proclaimed this fact loudly and long to our friends and we refuse every invitation that it is possible to get out of for those two sacred occasions4 ,but it doesn't do a particle of good4 8,being an unusually charming and entertaining individual1 my husband is regarded by my friends as a social tidbit--a particularly savory hors d'uvre1 as it were--and they gobble up our evenings together without the slightest compunction4 ,if we won't go to them1 all right4 ,they will come to us4 ,so just about the time we are settling down for a real heart-to-heart talk1 here come the ,smiths to pass a pleasant evening with us1 or the ,joneses descend upon us and bear us off1 shrieking and protesting1 to listen to their new radio1 or the ,thompsons telephone that they are just coming over for a game of bridge4 8,and there are the other devouring friends who nibble away at our independence like a mouse at a cheese1 until some day we suddenly wake up to the fact that our freedom is all gone4 ,we haven't a vestige of liberty left4 ,we dare not give a party and leave them out4 ,we have to explain to them everything we do and tag meekly along in their footsteps4 ,and there are other devouring friends who gnaw constantly on our sympathies by telling us all of their troubles and making us bear their burdens for them4 ,they are ghouls who make us feed them our hearts to satisfy their morbid appetite for pity4 ,perhaps there is no way to get rid of devouring friends1 but it certainly would add to the pleasures of life if we could swat them as we do other household pests40 ,,lxviii ,,the ,,secret ,,of ,,happiness ,what is the secret of happiness8 ,i once asked ,mary ,anderson this question and she replied3 8,to find out what you want of life1 and then to have the courage to take it4 ,i wanted quiet1 seclusion1 home and husband and children1 the ordinary domestic life of woman10 she went on4 8,i had the courage to leave the stage at the very height of my career4 ,and ,i have had the courage to refuse every offer to go back1 no matter how dazzling it was4 ,i have also had the courage to stay in my sleepy little village and refuse to let myself be drawn into the brilliant whirl of ,london society4 ,i have been happy because ,i knew what ,i wanted1 and ,i have been brave enough to take it in spite of all temptations to be led into doing the things that ,i did not want to do40 ,undoubtedly this is one of the answers to the great riddle that we are always asking and that so few solve4 ,a great many people are unhappy because they do not really know what they want4 ,they have no clear vision of the thing they are seeking4 ,they are torn between conflicting desires and never settle down to any one thing1 and find contentment and peace in that4 ,you see this exemplified in the men who are always changing from one occupation to another1 and who work with their minds on their golf and play golf with their minds on their work4 ,you see it in the women who are fretful and peevish wives and mothers1 complaining of the burdens of domesticity and feeling that they have missed happiness in not following some career1 and in the women who have followed careers and who are always bemoaning their loneliness because they have no families4 ,yet how seldom do the disgruntled1 who lament their fate in life so loudly1 have the courage to face about and take the road that they at least believe leads to happiness6 ,we behold so many idle tears that we are inclined to believe there are vast numbers of human beings who get a kind of morbid pleasure out of misery4 ,but what is the secret of happiness8 ,i give four guesses at the conundrum4 ,the first is work1 to keep so busy that we do not have leisure to think whether we are happy or not4 ,there is no other pleasure comparable to the clean joy of being swallowed up in some useful1 constructive work that calls forth every power of mind and body4 ,your own job1 that you do competently1 has for you a never-failing interest1 a perpetual thrill that nothing else in the world can give4 ,only brainless idiots are content to loaf4 ,intelligent1 thinking men and women must keep busy in order to be happy4 ,my second guess is that happiness is the bird in the hand and not the bird in the bush4 ,if we are ever to be happy we must be happy now at the present moment4 ,we cannot put it off until to-morrow4 ,you are always hearing people say that they are going to do this and that when they get rich1 that they are going to travel when they are old1 they are going to play1 they are going to take up old acquaintances1 they are going to enjoy themselves five1 ten1 twenty years hence4 ,but when the time comes that they have set to be happy in1 they find that they have lost their capacity for enjoyment4 ,those who have inched and pinched and sweated every penny trying to accumulate a fortune have formed such a habit of parsimony that it is agony to them to spend money4 ,those who have denied themselves too much have lost all desire4 ,those who have stayed at home too long have become such a fixture on ,main ,street that they are lonesome and homesick everywhere else4 ,so the happy men and women are those who take the goods the gods provide each hour4 ,they make a reasonable provision against the rainy day1 and then they indulge themselves in the good clothes1 the pretty home1 the comfortable car1 the palatable food1 the little trips that are within their reach4 ,they do not put off every pleasure until some mythical1 problematic day1 when they will be able to live in a palace and have a ,rolls-,royce and ,paris clothes and when they will be too old and rheumatic and set in their ways to want to do anything but sit by the fire in their own familiar chair4 ,never was there sounder philosophy conveyed than in the old comic opera ditty which said1 8,i want what ,i want when ,i want it10 and if we don't take it then1 it is dust and ashes in our teeth4 ,happiness consists in simple things4 ,we are always envying the rich and great1 and think how happy they must be1 but we might well pity them1 for they have far more sources of sorrow than we have4 ,beyond a modest competence1 riches are a burden1 and money can become a curse that blights every natural joy4 ,the millionaire is cut off from the greatest of all happiness--that of knowing himself loved for himself alone4 ,he suspects the motive of every friend1 he does not even trust the woman he marries1 and he knows his wealth to be a blight upon his children4 ,the real source of happiness is in enjoying simple things--a gorgeous sunset1 a beautiful landscape1 a clever book1 a good dinner1 the talk of a friend1 the unfaltering love of husband or wife1 a baby's arms around your neck1 a fine son and daughter filling you with pride and joy4 ,these have no price tag on them4 ,they may belong just as much to the poor man as the rich man4 ,indeed1 they oftener do4 ,finally1 remember the song1 8,i ,want to ,be ,happy1 but ,i ,can't ,be ,happy ,till ,i ,make ,you ,happy1 ,too40 ,in unselfishness1 in doing good to others--that is the real answer to the secret of how to be happy4 ,,lxix ,,preparedness ,,for ,,old ,,age ,what are you storing up for your old age8 ,are you laying up any money against the time when you will be old and feeble and no longer able to work8 ,the hour will strike for you1 as it does for others1 when your earning powers will be gone4 ,your hands will be too stiff and clumsy to keep on with their accustomed task4 ,your mind will be too slow to go the pace in the fierce competition in the commercial world4 ,if you are an employee1 you will lose your job4 ,if you are a business man1 you will find that your trade has somehow drifted away from you4 ,if you are a professional man1 you will be superseded by the new men whose stars are just rising on the horizon4 ,nothing that you can do will alter these conditions4 ,no miracle will save you from the common fate of all who grow old4 ,but if you have saved up enough money to make you independent1 it will be merely a matter of mild regret to you4 ,if1 however1 you have laid up nothing for the rainy day that is bound to come to you1 it will be a tragedy that you will pray death to end4 ,for in all the world there are no people so piteous and forlorn as those who are forced to eat the bitter bread of dependence in their old age1 and find how steep are the stairs of another man's house4 ,wherever they go they know themselves unwelcome4 ,wherever they are1 they feel themselves a burden4 ,there is no humiliation of the spirit they are not forced to endure4 ,their hearts are scarred all over with the stabs from cruel and callous speeches4 ,in youth money is a convenience1 an aid to pleasure4 ,in age it is an absolute necessity1 for when we are old we have to buy even consideration and politeness from those about us4 ,this is true even in the households of our own children1 for between the father and mother who are able to pay their own way and are the source of a never-ending flow of gifts and treats1 and the father and mother who must be supported is a great gulf fixed4 ,it is the difference between having the place of honor and the back seat2 between being listened to with respect and having one's opinions derided2 between having one's little peculiarities catered to as interesting characteristics and being snubbed for one's old-fashioned ways4 ,nor is this as unfeeling and hard-boiled as it seems4 ,the average young couple has all it can do1 in these times of the high cost of living1 to provide for itself and the children1 and it makes the burden crushing to have to add the extra weight of the support of the old people of the families4 ,the fate of the dependent old is so terrible that it is a marvel that it does not frighten every one into trying to provide against it4 ,yet it was recently stated in a journal of statistics that #hj per cent of the men and women more than sixty years of age were dependent either upon their children or upon public charity4 ,don't let this misfortune befall you4 ,guard against it4 ,begin systematic saving while you are young1 so that when you are old you will at least have the comfort of being independent4 ,are you laying up affection for your old age8 ,most of us have a curious and nave belief in what we call 8natural affection40 ,we befool ourselves into thinking that people must love us because they stand in a certain relationship to us and because there are blood ties between us4 ,never was there a more fallacious theory4 ,there is1 to be sure1 the mother's passion for the child she has borne and the instinctive clinging of the child to its mother while it is young and helpless1 but that is all4 ,it doesn't follow as a matter of course that grown-up men and women love their parents just because they are their parents4 ,as a matter of fact1 they don't1 unless the father and mother have won their love by years of tenderness and understanding and sympathy4 ,you can't be hard and tyrannical and selfish and stingy with your children and expect them to love you because it is their duty to do so4 ,if you want your children to love you when you are old1 you have to begin winning their hearts when they are in the cradle4 ,have you laid up a good supply of friendship for your old age8 ,no complaint is heard more often from the old than that they are lonely4 ,few come to see them4 ,they are seldom asked out4 ,no one sends them flowers when they are sick4 ,they are neglected and they crave the little attentions that we all like and yearn for the society of their fellow creatures4 ,now1 when old people are lonely1 it is always their own fault4 ,it is because they have neglected to lay up any friendships for the sere and yellow days when they have no longer the power to attract people to them4 ,they have gone their selfish way through life1 sufficient unto themselves in their youth4 ,they have never held out a helping hand to those in need4 ,they have never wept with those who wept and rejoiced with those who rejoiced4 ,they have not bothered to write notes of condolence or congratulation4 ,they have never visited the sick and afflicted4 ,they have never spent an hour listening to an old person's garrulous talk1 and so1 when they get old1 they are repaid in the same coin4 ,are you laying up any mental riches for your old age8 ,i know an old lady so feeble that she cannot stir from her chair1 and whose eyes have failed so that she cannot tell day from night1 and who is so deaf that she cannot be read to1 but who passes her days delightfully reciting to herself whole cantos of ,scott and ,byron and recalling word for word chapters of ,dickens and ,thackeray and ,miss ,austen4 ,her mind to her a kingdom is1 in which she finds entertainment and amusement4 ,will you be amused or bored when you are in your nineties and have nothing but your own society8 ,i know another woman1 middle-aged1 who is deliberately laying up a treasure of memories of travel to solace her in her old age4 ,she will never know a dull moment1 for she will have something to think about besides her rheumatism and her diet when she sits alone in the twilight of life4 ,old age comes to us all4 ,don't let it find you empty-handed or empty-minded4 ,thus shall you make it a time of happiness instead of torment4 ,the ,blue ,book of ,social ,usage-- ,etiquette ,in ,society1 ,in ,business1 ,in ,politics1 and ,at ,home ,by ,,emily ,,post 8,the most complete book on social usage that ever grew between two covers40 ,there are #bd pages about introductions and greetings1 #g about street conduct1 #ac on conduct at the theatre1 #aj on conversation1 #be on cards and visits1 #cc on invitations1 #ab on teas1 #fa on dinners1 #ab on breakfasts and suppers1 #bf on balls and dances1 #ab on 8the debutante10 #ab on matrimonial engagements1 #cc on preparations for the wedding1 #ce on 8the day of the wedding10 #bc on funerals1 #eh on letters1 #bb on dress1 #i on the clothes of a gentleman1 #cd on the well-appointed house1 #bd on traveling at home and abroad4 ,the author is a shining figure in society and her charming and popular book is accepted everywhere as the authoritative ,blue ,book of ,social ,usage4 ,illustrated4 ,crown #hvo1 ,cloth4 #fci pages4 #d1 net2 flexible leather1 #g4ej1 net2 postage1 #ah;c extra4 ,the ,blue ,book of ,personal ,attire-- ,how to ,dress ,well ,a valuable treatise by an authority which considers dress for women from both the artistic and the practical view-points1 and provides sound information on the principles of tasteful and attractive apparel4 ,not only does this book give details for enhancing one's personal appearance1 for slenderizing the stout1 for broadening the slender1 for the selection of headwear and other accessories1 but also practical guidance for the selection and testing of materials1 choosing of laces and furs1 budgeting the dress allowance1 and for the care and up keep of the wardrobe4 ,it is brimful of the very information pertaining to dress1 color1 and toilet accessories about which every woman hesitates to accept any but truly trustworthy advice and is a fitting companion to ,emily ,post's 8,etiquette40 ,modistes1 designers1 dressmakers1 and milliners will also find this work of highest value4 ,illustrated4 #hvo1 ,cloth4 #did pages4 #c4ej1 net2 postage1 #ah;c extra4 ,the ,blue ,book of ,cookery ,and ,manual of ,house ,management ,by ,,isabel ,,cotton ,,smith ,with an ,introduction by ,emily ,post1 ,author of 8,etiquette0 ,this is not 8just another cookbook10 but an original and authoritative guide for the preparation of foods and for house management4 ,all the originality and importance of this volume would be of limited value unless it were written by so capable and practical an authority as ,isabel ,cotton ,smith4 ,it contains more than #b1jjj recipes2 gives complete information on the management of house and home1 with invaluable suggestions for table economy1 and includes everything for every season and every day in the year1 for every possible repast from breakfast to late supper and from teas and picnic meals to specially designed menus for children at home and at school1 as well as menus for vegetarians4 ,crown #hvo1 ,washable ,fabrikoid4 #b4ej1 net2 postage1 #ah;c extra4 ,a ,woman of ,fifty ,by ,,rheta ,,childe ,,dorr ,this unique autobiography of a remarkable and courageous woman covers one of the most revolutionary periods of time in history--from virtually the beginning of a concerted movement to organize the women of this country in the fight for equality in politics and industry to the time when these hitherto unattainable causes were firmly established in our economic and governmental systems4 ,as journalist1 lecturer1 editor1 and writer1 the author has taken part in virtually every event that marks her generation2 was the only woman war correspondent with the famed ,russian ,women's 8,battalion of ,death0 on the last ,kerensky offensive on the ,eastern ,front2 spent three years in 8after war0 ,europe1 and is to-day in the thick of things in this country4 ,written in a frank1 forceful1 and grippingly interesting style4 #hvo1 ,cloth4 #dhb pp4 #b4ej1 net2 postage1 #ah;c extra4 ,,funk ,,wagnalls ,,company1 ,publishers #ced-cfj ,fourth ,avenue1 ,new ,york ,transcriber's ,notes pg #eh ,changed3 which are resonsible for more real to3 which are responsible for more real pg #fa ,changed3 you happen to be born in a certain relationshp to3 you happen to be born in a certain relationship pg #ga ,changed3 any particular trade or profesion to3 any particular trade or profession pg #aja ,changed3 earn her own living as a 8poor working women40 to3 earn her own living as a 8poor working woman40 pg #aje ,changed3 so far be it from me to abridge to3 so far be it for me to abridge pg #aej ,changed3 life better than than that of the successful to3 life better than that of the successful pg #agi ,changed3 he will be filled fell of pep and energy to3 he will be filled full of pep and energy pg #agi ,changed3 discovery that somewhow the mysterious something to3 discovery that somehow the mysterious something pg #ahh ,changed3 she is not likely to tarnish your deal4 to3 she is not likely to tarnish your ideal4 pg #bag ,changed3 as many men starving for affection as there are woman4 to3 as many men starving for affection as there are women4 pg #bah ,changed3 reward depends altogther on his wife's attitude to3 reward depends altogether on his wife's attitude pg #bba ,changed3 their purpose when they falter and waiver to3 their purpose when they falter and waver