Newspaper Page Text
WHY MARRIED
Dorothy 13ix in New
ni
Marriage, ja s we see it illustrated
in everyday life, is generally ? fail
ure.
It brings happiness to the very few,
misery and diseuchantment to the
njaoy.
It is a dull plain of dreary monot
ony, stretching from the altar to the
grave, on which love yawns it?elf to
death as soon as the honeymoon is
over.
There is never tho slightest diffi
culty in picking out any married cou
ple in apublio assemblage.
If on the stroet you see a man walk
ing about two feet ahead of his wife
and letting her drag along as best she
may over the crossings, you know the
woman is his wife.
If at the theatre you see a couple
Bitting up between the acts in frozen
silence, or reading the jokes in the
back of the programme, you know
they are husband and wife.
If you hear a woman tell a story
and a man sarcastically observes that
be heard that anecdote in tbe Ark
during the Flood, you know tbe gen
tleman is tho lady's husband. !
If you see a couple treat each other
with an absolute disregard of every
canon of decent social intercourse, you
do not have to be a Sherlock Holmes
to deduce tho faot that they are mar
ried.
Now, nobody marries to achieve
this kind of fate. Everyx youth and
maiden believe that the wedding ring
is the circle that bounds paradise, and
when they marry they expect to be
perfectly happy.
They see that other married people
are bored and weary and disgruntled,
but that does not deter them from
taking .the fatal step, for marriage
may be best described as the final
triumph of- hope over other people's
experience.
The most terrible thing in the world
is the disillusionment of matrimony,
and that the tie which is the closest
and the holiest bond that can be forg
ed between two human beings, in the
majority of oases, becomes merely a
ball and chain' that fetters them to
gether like prisoners, and that you
can hear olank as they walk.
Why is it that a man and woman
who have sacrificed everything for the
privilege of each other's society begin
to gape in eaoh other's faces the min
ute they find themselves vis-a-viB
across* their own hearthstone?
If marriages were arranged by the
parents, as in Europe, or if people
generally married for money or posi
tion, one could understand why mat
rimony from the point of view cf
promoting happiness is so often a fail
ure. , . .
Marriages, however, in this coun
try at least, are almost universally
love matches and it is a cynical com
mentary on the brevity of affection
that the country that leads the world
in love matches also leads the world
in the number of divorces.
But it is not of divorce I would
speak here.
The aoutely miserable marriage gen
erally finds its own cure.
The average married couple's suf
ferings are not aotive.
They are merely the dull ache of
disappointment, of a romance that
bas turned to prose, of an unsatisfied
longing for something they wanted
?nd never got,
Yet these people were once in love
with each other; they once idealised
etch other; they once entranced eaoh
ether. ; ;
They married in order that they
night spend their lives together; and
the greatest problem of civilization is
*hy, when they started out with so
|~"ch material for happiness, they so
n came to bankruptcy,
t is easy to say that the reason
ody realizes a lover's paradise is
auso lovers expect too much.
Jo couple could keep keyed up to
high C pitch of sentiment of tbeir
rting days.
*o woman can remain forever young
1 beautifol, nor can any man really
oy holding a lily-white band M
ymaj?jbaj|retob.
ft ?B at??^.1a blow to a young
'pie to find out that they have got
live in a world that is full of bill*,
? cooks, and sickness, and oolickly
?es, instead, of one that is all
ills and kisses, but even this docs
?ccount for the deolin* and falling
in domestic happiness.
MUife is different from the way
imagined it, but it is only married
! that bores us.
Carried life is dull because, as a
>eral thing, it is lived amidst unat
ctive and uncomfortable anrround
9i where. one ^hears nothingV but;
! creating of the domestic ma
??ry and tho groaning of the opera
nd environment is everything.
Hto difference between bil?-stj?k
LIFE IS DULL.
York -A, m er i can- J o Ur
al.
! ers1 pasto aod sauoc Hollandaise is
that one comes in a bucket and the
other is served in a china dish.
What makes a dinner of beefsteak
and potatoes gay at a restaurant and
dull at home?
It is the pink-shaded1 candle and a
woman who smiles at you in one place
and a sickly gas jet and a wife who
nags in the other.
The earliest disillusionment of mat
rimony comes from women not under
standing the business of making a
comfortable home.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred
the very first inkling that a young
man gets that marriage is a failure
is when he discovers that the angel
he has espoused does not know the
first principle of how to run a house,
and the young wife ascertains that
the romantic hero of her dreams has
to bo fed night and morning, like
the animals in a menagerie, to keep
him in a good humor.
Before a man io married ho thinks
of possessing a home as a goal toward
which to work.
He looks forward to it as a place of
peace and rest where he will go to
throw down the troubles of life and be
soothed and comforted.
He Bees himself sitting down to
daintily prepared and served meals,
opposite a cheerful and neatly dressed
wife. *
When, instead of this, he finds him
self returning home at night to au ill
kept, ill-managed house, when he sits
down opposite to a frowsy woman to
a dinner of over done meat and under
done bread; when, in placo of the
peace and rest he expected, ho finds
that he has added all of the multifari
ous worries of housekeeping to his
own business cares, all of his ideals of
marriage and home and love are shat
tered at one fell blow.
He has struck the up-grade of mat
rimony, where it is just one long, life
less, spiritless pull.
It is to be the everlasting disgrace
of woman that it is her hand that
oftenest first plucks the illusion from
matrimony.
To woman ihis is a sordid view of
a romantic subject, and the thing that
they never, can forgive man is that he
can't be satisfied to live on love and
soda crackers. " .
They forget that sentiment is the
outcome of a full stomach.
Nobody ever felt like making lo\
when he was hungry.
No man was ever romantio when he
was unoomfortable.
There are times when dinner is
bound to take the precedence over
kisses.
" These are sad facts, but they are
facts nevertheless.
Doubtless a man ought to be able
to so o?o his wife through the eye of
affection' that she will look as muoh
like an angel to him in a sjouohy
dressing jacket as she does in dainty
chiffons.
. Doubtless he ought to be able to eat
leatery pie and watery potatoes and
love her still, and bless heaven for
having bestowed a treasure upon
him.
Doubtless he ought to look forward
with joy to returning home at night
after his hard day's work and help
get the dinner.
Doubtless he. ought to find it en
chanting to spend his evenings listen
ing to his wife's tales of the domestic
mishaps of the day and of what a mar*
tyr she is. ' '
Th? only trouble is he doesn't.
This isn't what he married. her
for. " .t
It turns love's young dream into a
nightmare.
It changes what ought to be a pic
nic into ft dall, dreary, deadly level
grind.
And this is all that only too many
men ever know , of married life, for
there are plenty of men who never
eat a good meal or spend one peace*
ful and hftppy hour in their own
homeB.
Every woman who marries faces the
question of the kind os a home she
will make, and deoides it. j
She can always keep the glamour
of poetry and romance about it, or
she can make it as bald and prosaic
and monotonous and uninteresting as
an alkali desert.
She can make it a place that is the
most loved spot on earth to a man,
or the ono that fills'him with the
greatest sense of weariness and repul
sion?a place to fly to, or one to fly
away from.s
Of course to make a 1l. mo that is
always fall of charm takos Work and
thought, but it is worth the price.
.3?or a woman not to succeed in
J that is for her to bo a failure as a wo
man.
I It may be a .woman's misfortune
{ never to be loved and married, tit
onoe }o h*vo been loved and married
aod then to lobe her husband's affec
tion is her shame.
*A man does not love a woman pri
marily because she is a good cook and
a competent manager, but if he keeps
on loving her after he is married to
her it is hecauso she is.
Show me a woman's housekeeping,
and I can tell you to a mathematical
nicety how 'ong she will keep her
husband's love.
Tbe first great danger of married
life becoming dull consists in its
being lived in unattractive and un
comfortable environment,1 and this
is a catastrophe that every woman
has it in her power to prevent if she
will.
If tbe first snag that a young couple
strikes in married life, and that
jolts the romance out of matrimony,
is the wife's total inability to wres
tle successfully with the household
problem, the second is the money
question.
The first disillusions the man.
The second smashes the woman's
ideals luto smithereens.
Somebody?doubtless a matrimonial
promoter?once announced the ohe?ry
theory that marriage was a real econ
omy beoause two people can live
cheaper than one, and most men are
taken in by this fallacy.
They even marry on it, and when
they find that it isn't true?that it
takes twice as much food for two as
one, and four times as much house
reut, and ten times as many clothes
when the other one is a vomau, it
gives the man a shook of surprise
from whioh he never recovers as long
as he lives.
He wasn't prepared for it.
He had expeoted sportive cupid to
play about his pathway, and instead
of that the bill collector camps upon
his trail, and it makes him grumpy,
not so much beoause he is not willing
to pay as beoause he did not expect
to have to pay.
It is sentiment with a price tag on
it, and he grumbles at the price.
For the woman the disillusionment
is even more complete. Nobody but
a woman ever knows the agony of the
hour of enlightenment when she gets
the first intimation that she, and the
I household expenses she represents aie
considered a burden.
This isn't what she married for,
either.
During the days of courtship the
lover lavished every luxury upon
her.
The husband complains at supply
ing her with the necessities of life.
While he wooed her ho swora that
he asked no greater privilege of hea
ven than the pleasure of providing for
her. As soon as they are married he
talks of having to support her.
Before they were married he de
lighted in bestowing gifts and treats
upon her.
After they are married he scrimps
her on street oar fare.
As a girl she had thought of the
position of. a wife as being one of hon
ored independence. ,
When she is married she finds that
she is a dependent who has her de
pendence continually thrown in her
face.
.She had pictured matrimony as an
?lysium in whioh she would be taken
care of and protected from the world
by a husband who would be a Prince
Bountiful.
She, finds it the only situation in
life in which the woman has to beg for
the money she earns.
Practically every wife works harder
for a husband than she oonld be hired
to work for an employer, but not one
wife in a thousand gets anything for
it but her board and clothes.
She has no separate allowance.
She has no money she can spend on
personal gratification. Every oent
must be accounted for, and when tbe
monthly* bills come in the average
huabaud acts precisely as if she had
eaten every mouthful of the food
charged on the grocery and butcher
bills, aod had worn all of the olothes
on the dry goods bills, and had ab
sorbed overy particle of the heat and
light for the coal and gas bills.
Is it any wonder that married life
that is set to the tune of the hus
band's complaint over tbe family ex
pense s gets to be the dead march of
a woman's sonl instead of the glad;
sweet song that she had expeoted it to
be?
It is a man's attitude on the finan
cial problem that strips the glamour
front married life for women and turns
i?i front poetry into proso, and if there
were no money, question in the home
we should hear very little of the di
vorce question.
If men would state their position
on the matter as candidly hoforo mar
riage as they do after marriage, there
would be pre oi ou s few weddings.
If a man would say to a girl that if
sue married him she would have to.
ask him for every dollar, and wheedle
and cajole him out of it; that every
time she bought a new dress, or a new
hat, she would have to endure his
sarcastic comments on her extrava
gance, and that the arrival of the
monthly bills would provoke a storm
that would scare her out of her
wits, the. girl.would say "no" every
time.
Shf? Wonjld prefer to earn her own
liviog in son easier aud more peace
able way.
The pos* "on that men take iu re
gar^ to then " es and money is tho
most illoeie- treasonable thing
on earth. n worthy of the
name expei ">rt his family.
I'robabU ' jo it, since it is
a self-it ...u^tior that he takes
upon hiuis
Yet when ne has to do it he does it
with the groaning and moaning of a
martyr. It may be that men's com
plaints, publie and private, over what
their families cost them are merely a
little pleasantry to call atcntion to their
virtues, but it is a joke that effectual
ly spoils married life for the woman
who is tho object of it.
When men and women acquire
enough intelligence to settle the mon.
ey question before marriage instead of
afterward it will do more to infuse
happiness into matrimony than any
thing else.
No man should marry a woman until
he has thoroughly familiari/.cd him
self with grocery bills and coal bills,
and butchers' bills, and drug bills,
and doctors' bills, and millinery bills,
and dressmaking bills md all the
other bills and ills to which matri
mony is heir.
And no woman should marry a
man until she has got an ironclad
contract for a definite allowance of
her own personal expenses and house
hold needs.
There are just 30 times less friction
in getting money out of a man once a
month than there is in getting it from
him every day.
The reason that most married cou
ples have not time to talk sentiment
is because they are haggling over
money.
The source of discord has to be
eliminated if the course of true love is
to flow smoothly.
The third reason that married life
is dull is because the curse of com
mercialism is upon it.
The one deathless passion of the
American man is the passion for mak
ing money.
He loves his wife, but he loves his
business better.
He gives one thought to bow ho
pan make her happy where ho gives
hours of concentrated study to trying
to devise new ways of extending hia
trade.
He expends his amiability in jolly
ing his customers, not in paying com
pliments to his wife.
He exhausts his diplomacy in deal
ing with difficult olients, not in try
ing to get along harmoniously with
his wife.
His witty stories, his entertaining
conversation, his suavity and polite
ness even, are for those who can
bring grist to his mill. They are
too precious forborne consumption.
The best of himself, in mind and
manners and body, he gives to his
business, and all that many a woman
ever sees of her husband is a man
that comes home at night with wreck
ed nerves and a temper that hushc
the children's prattle as if they were
striaken dumb, and makes the cat
take to the cellar.
No woman marries to get this sort
of a matrimonial bargain.
She married for a companion, not to
get a patent adding machine or human
cash register.
She expected to have some one to
talk to, some one who would be in
terested in her and sympathize With
her, and make her life brighter and
happior for her.
. She finds that she is united to a
man who grunts out replies to her
over his coffee and rolls in the morn
ing because he is so busy looking over
the financial oolumn in the news
papers he has no time to talk.
As soon as breakfast io over he
gives her a perfunctory peok on the
cheek in place of a kiss, because his
mind is too absorbed in planning the
business of the day for hica to realize
her existence, muoh less to be con
soious of any thrill of love or regret
in parting from her.
At night he returns too tired to
talk, too tired to go to any place of
amusement, too spent with the efforts
oF the day to even think of such a
thing as amusing or entertaining his
wife, and with bis only desire to be
left undisturbed to pursue the finan
cial edition of the evening paper,
when he does not go out to meet
other business men, and plan for the
morrow;
If his wife dies, he regrets it, but
he conspleB himself by plunging deep
er and deeper into business.
He does not . commit suicide over
her grave. He only blows out his
brains when his business goes to
smash.
Is it any wonder that a woman
married to a man utterly absorbed
in his occupation finds married life
dun? y
This is a mistake. Women require
something more than money to make
them happy. They are not willing to
tradeoff love for a fine- house, and
their husband's oompanionship for a
diamond brooch.
it is a nice, thrilling, exciting sort
of existenqe, isn't it, for a woman to
spend her dtys trying to. make a com
fortable home for a man who is too
busy to notioo her efforts to please
him and to pass her oveniggevfcj^g
society of one who is buried in a news
paper?
Of course, men say that the reason
they work so hard is because it re
quires so much inouey to support their
ivcs.
To this women may well retort
that the reason that their husbands
avo to furnish them so much money
is because they give them nothing
lse.
Wh en a uiau is disappointed in his
wife he geucrally takes to drink.
Wheu a womau is disappointed in
her husband she takes to extrava
gance.
Mauy a womau goes out und buyo
mportod gowns because she feels
neglected and miserable, and is try
ng to stifle her heart by eoveriug it
up with chiffon and velvet.
Many a woman would joyfully ex
change her automobile and stables for
a certainty that she could raise the
same sort of a heart thrill in her hus
band that a five point rise iu stocks
does.
A man thinks that he can make a
woman happy by giving her the things
that money buys. Hence he has a
clear conscience in absorbing himself
in business as long as he lavishes lux
uries upon her.
A man who wants to make his wife
happy and to make married life in
teresting to her must put her first in
bis heart and "his business second. If
ho will do that he will find that he
docs not have to work so hard and
that it does not require so much to
support a wife.
One of the chief reasons why mar
ricd life is dull is because it is all
work and no play in the family circle
Dorothy Dix.
His Reference to Signs Fatal.
A favorite prank among Dartmouth
students thirty years ago wae the
shifting of storekeepers' signs 'jo that
for example,the college treasurer would
find a barber's sign over his door, the
druggist would find a blacksmith'i
sign, and so on, says tho Boston Her
ald. A current tradition tells of how
6ophomorca attempted to remove
sign one night in tho late '70's awe
the owner who immediately gave chase.
The boys escaped, but tho offended
owner "spotted" their room and the
next morning reported them to Presi
dent Smith, who at once summoned
tho culprits to his.office where the fol
lowing dialogue ensued:
"Whore were you at 12 o'clock
last night?" inquired tho president of
one.
"In my room," was the quick re
ply
"What doing?"
"Heading the Bible.*'
"What portion of tho Bible were
you reading at such an hour?"
"I don't recollect the chapter."
"Can't you tell what it was about?'
persisted the president; "it must have
been something interesting to keep
you up so late."
"All I recollect is one verse," the
student replied. "A wicked and per
verse generation shall seek after a
sign, but no sign shall be given it,'
and he was suspended for three
months.
War Relics Not Highly Regarded.
A Washington veteran who recent
ly visited historic South Mountain, in
Washington County, Md., found
that there are many grim relies of
the sanguinary battle of Antietam,
and the fight of South Mountain, in
the possession of farmers in that vicie*
ity.
"The strangest part of it," said tho
Washington man, "is that those rel
io8 are regarded by the natives as of
little value. In one place, not far
from Eakle's Mill a farmer has a
beautifully engraved Masonic sword
whioh has been used as a plaything
by the ohildren of the neighborhood.
The handle of the sword is of ivory
oarved with Masonic emblems.
"The farmer who owns this rare
relic stated that his father detached
it from the body of a dead Confederate
officer, who, after being shot at the
battle of South Mountain, orawled
into the thicket to die. His remains
were found there several days after
the fight, when tho guns of both ar
mies wore thundering along Antietam
creek and about Sharpsburg.
"In another farm house a bayonet
found in a clump of bushes on South
Mountain is doing duty as a stove
lifter, and at others are cannon halls
and musket balls galore, whioh are
thrown about as though they were
of no hiatorio value."?Washington
Star. _
? Good manners in a man make yon
feel he doesn't treat you so bad as he
might, even if ho rojjS;^ ^
f
KILL the COUGH
AND CURE thb LUNC8
WITH
Dr. King's
New Discovery
CONSUMPTION
0U0H8 and
>LDS
Price
60c & $1.00
Free Trial.
Surest and Quickest Cure for all
THROAT and I,TJNG TROUB.
LES, or MONEY BACK.
? '. lif.-. Ily luklntrr.it.ltolt(uil>U>t)in tinie'yoit'H k?vhboth worry Am',
inlilftttaiitlAvoiil ill h< nlth. Itvilnte'x Liver Tablet < are easy t?? Uvfc?
H<vwuttt in ertVct. always ?ntisfuvtory in result*. M cdiOCOu?e-COtttuis
iablct.H in ft COllVOUif Ut ln>X, !? Cents.
RfPf'd by '.ho RADICAL REMEDY CO., Hickory, N, C,A
FOR SALE BY EVANS PHARMACY.
IP YOU ARE GOING TO BUY?
A Buggy
Or Harness,
We want a chance to sell you.
If you OWE US you don't know-how we would apprec?>
te a payment theseIpinchingTktimes.
VANDIVER BROS. & MAJOR.
Now comes the "Good Old Summer Time"
when you want one of our.
Up-to-Date VEHICLES for Pleasure,
Carriages, Surreys,
Phaetons, Buggies,
Run-a-Bouts,
Bucliboard, Traps,
And in fact anything you need in the Vehicle line you will 15nd at o ur '
positories. A fine line of HARNESS, SADDLK3, UMBRELLAS, C'AK?
OPY SHADES, DUSTERS, &c.
Call and examine for yourself, and if we cannot Buit you it will be oils*
fault. Very truly,
FRETWELL-HANKS CO., Anderson, S. C,
THE SOUTH'S GREATEST SYSTEM !
Unexcelled Dining Car Service.
Through Pullman Sleeping Cars on alllTrains,
ConvenientlSchedules on all Local Trains,
WINTER TOURIST RATES are now intellect lo all Florida I Pciu>a
For full information as to rates, routes, etc.,fJconsultJlneareEt Sctiilua
Railway Ticket Agent, or
R. W. HUNT, Division Passenger Agent, Charleston, & C
?-qs
0 w
wffl
0 - ?d
Q
# O
O
M 5
H
M
M
00
O
?
?
HJ
H)
Q
W
CD
W
Ni
O
S
CO
o
o
4
fia
ei
ONE CAR OF HOG FEED.
Have juat received one Car Load of HOG FEED
(Shorts) at very close prices. Come before they are
all gone. Now is the time for throwing?
LIME
c?
Around your premises to prevent a case of fever or
some other disease, that will cost you very much morps
than the price of a barrel of Lime (81.00.) We have*
a fresh shipment in stock, and will be glad to send y 01*
some. If you contemplate building a barn or any
other building, see us before buying your?
CEMENT and LI?
As we sell the very best qualities only.
E,
O. D. AND?R80K?.
MOVED I
WE have moved our Shop and office below Peoples' Bank, in fronl of
Mr. J. J. Fietwell'a Stables. We respectfully aak all our friendu that j?sod
any Roofing done, or any kind of Repair work, Engine Stacks, Evaporators*
or any kind of Tin or Gravel Roofing to call on us, as we are prepared^toda
it? promptly and in best maoner.^SoTicitingJyoaipatronage, we
