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'JANE WH1TAKER TELLS WHAT SHE THINKS OF
"THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE"
BY JANE WHITAKER
"I would like to know Jane Whitaker's views on the subject of 'Home
Breakers,' the maa who neglects wife and family for a chicken, so-called.
Who is the sufferer? The woman deceived, the man himself, or the girl?
There are many 'Home Breakers' and 'Heart Breakers' that the laws can
not punish, because they can find no complaint against them. Old Maid?'
If my correspondent desires my views only jn regard to the class of
women to whom men have vulgarly applied the name of "chickens," there
is nothing-to say, for they are only young silly girls light women and light
omen are never home breakers. The man who will wreck his home over
a light woman would have wrecked it over drink or gambling or any other
thing if light women had not existed.
If "Old Maid" wishes me to discuss the eternal triangle; and it is not
limited to the Other Woman, alone, but almost as frequently there is the
Other Man, it is a subject so broad that I almost hesitate to express an,
opinion.
And each case is different. Just as in crime, there are always different
temptations, different circumstances, and the closer we come to the heart
beats of life, the nearer we view its weakness and its temptations and its
"humanness," the less we feel like judging anyone, the less we condemn
and the more we pity.
At one time a murderer was to me a blood-stained thing to be loathed
and to be punished. And then I had an opportunity to study some young
boys on trial for murder and I found
that theirs was not the fault, but the
fault lay at the door of life.
They came into the world in the
wrong environment. In their souls
flamed a love of daring adventure
which, in a primitive country, would
have expended itself in pioneer ef
forts that would have made their
names lasting and glorified, but coop
ed in the narrow, groove of city life,
treading the same grind of common
place existence,, it burst .into a vol
cano of man-destruction, and realiz
ing these things, I no longer con
demned, but pitied them.
There was a time when I felt that
the woman of the streets was to be
avoided. When I shrank from con
tact with her and thought of her as
a thing degraded, and then one day I
sat by the bed of a woman of the
streets who was dying from poison
self-administered, and gaspingly she
told me of the temptation and the
'fall and the fact that she couldn't get
hack, and all my condemnation of
her faded away, and i took her cold
hand in mine and I am not ashamed
to say that I cried over her and kissed
her when I left her, and I no longer
condemned, but only wondered if I
would have been any stronger had
life -offered me the same temptations.
The Other Woman in the eternal
triangle is looked upon as a siren,
black-hearted, vampirish in purpose,
who goes about devastating happy
homes.
"Old Maid" may challenge my
statement, but it is my belief that no
home is wrecked by the Other Wo
man or the Other Man that was not
partly wrecked before the triangle
entered, for so long as a man and a
woman love and respect each other
there is no triangle.
The greatest fallacy is that the
marriage yow makes two people
mates. A a matter of fact, it is
merely an introduction to the real
character of each, shielded through
the days of courtship.
The woman is always the more de
ceitful in the days of courtship. If
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