Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1892-02-11

I'f
Because There Are TOO Many Pretty Sim.
pletons and Too. Few Cultured Girls.
The men who can marry, and who
nowadays are usually 33, are men OF
certain experience, and by no means
fools. They are attracted by gOod
looks, whether in the foolish or the
wise virgins, and are carried awgyby
unusual beauty, as they were inthe
days of Helen, and will be when the
world cools; but they are quite con-
scious of the advantage possessed by
the sensible and the cultivated.
They know what terrible bores ig.
norant girls can be, how utterly un.
reasonable they often are, and how
much more liable they are in middle
life to grow acrid, snappish, or posi-.
lively ill-tempered. There is ne one
so perverse as the woman without
intellectual interests whose station
happens to be at variance with her
ideas Of comfort, or who, being com.
Portable, is conscious of the faint
contempt, or rather slight avoidance,
of those around her. Women are
perfectly well aware when men listen
from politeness alone, and those
among them to whom that lot far :
grow as bitter as some disappointed
spinsters.
The men of 33 know perfectly well
how great part friendship plays in
married life, how it deepens affec-
tion, and how difficult it is to feel
friendship for woman whose early
charm has passed, who does not un-
derstand one word in six you say, and
who can neither sympathize with
failure nor understand why you have
succeeded. Camaraderie, one of the
most delightful of all the bonds OF
union, is impossible between the able
and the silly.
The men, too, are aware that it is
the clever girls, not the simpletons,
who are free. from the senseless ex-
travagance which is, perhaps, of all
the foibles which are not exactly
vices, the most permanently irritat-
ing in wives. That thing, at least,
culture has done for the majority OF
cultured women-it has taught them
how to count. The immense major
ity of cultivated girls are economical.
Frugality is their road to independ.
ence. They could not live their lives
IL they cost their fathers too much,
and they learn to know the value of
money, and tC avoid debt with hor.
ror. They are not, perhaps, devoted
to housekeeping" as some of the un.
lettered are, meaning, three times
out of five, endless and harassing in.
reference with their servant; but
they caL keep house, when they know
their incomes, at an outlay well with
In them.
Men know what It Is to be bored.
There is no bore on earth equal to the
woman who can neither talk nor
listen, who has no. mental interests
in common with her husband, and
who thinks his friends satirical be-
cause they attend to her with faint
sense of amused amazement. The
inen we are speaking of believe also
that, of the two, the educated are
the more affectionate.
But girls of culture are too frank
of speech, contradict men, unless
much and visibly their elders, toe
often and too bluntly, and are, there.
fore, condemned as formidable.
This habit, for it is nothing worse,
does not proceed in them, as it does
in most men, from either arrogance
or temper, or want of self-control, for
they do not display it toward women,
even when intellectually their inferi-
ors. 1t proceeds from delight in
intellectual independence, from an
unexpected sense of mental equality
which must he made audible TO be
thoroughly enjoyed. You will see
son contradict his father, or clever
lad his tutor, from precisely the same
motive; but men who are on an equal
ity rather avoid it, striving rather to
differ utterly under cover of some
formula of assent, and disliking the
Hazlitt wayne used to contradict
everybody, even the Waterman when
calling the hour-and they dislike it
J in women most particularly. Even
very sensible young men OF expert
ence will retreat before it with a
sense of disappointment and choler,
and never again, unless by accident,
give the girl who has tried, as they
think, to put them down" chance
of showing that she was attempting
nothing of the kind. The habit is a
mere gesture in reality, colts kick
of pleasure in the free field, and not,
as it often is in old women, sign OF
vicious temper; but 1t constantly
ruins bright girls chances, and has
done much to create in society an
impression which is, on the evidence
of facts, entirely unfounded. Guilt
waited girls have, in fact, trick OF
thinking that argument is conversa-
ton, and that contradiction shows
mental fearlessness-a trick which
men, even tolerant men, never quite
like. -Argonaut.