The Coconino weekly sun., 1896-01-16
WRITERS AS WIVES.
The Subject Considered In View of Re
 cent Divorce Case.

The Subject Considered in View of Re- cent Divorce Case.
 whether woman is any the less eli gible for the domestic circle by being intellectually developed to the extent O. her capacity is question that has vexed many debating societies and many thinkers from the time of St. Paul to that of Dr. Dix. It is a first rate question for debating societies be cause there is no answer to it. A great number of examples may be adduced on both sides and the debate may be con- tinued interminably and never arrive at conclusion. The excellent Dr. Johnson summed up what may be called the masculine, or negative, side by remarking: "Sir, man is better pleased when there is good dinner on the table than when his wife knows Greex;" but this dictum overlooks scv- eral other important points. For one thing, n woman does not as rule lea: n Greek in her capacity of man-pleaser, but on her own individual account. In another, the assumption of incompati bility between Greek and good dinners is pure assumption.
 A divorce that has just been an- nounced puts the venerable ques- tion in an aspect of some novelty. A "lady novelist" has just secured di- vorce from her husband for ''incompati- bility." The ordinary male comment will be that he is served right, and that he ought to have known what to ex- pect. It is fact that she was already somewhat hardened novelist when she became bride, so that the groom, could not plead ignorance of her pre-. vious literary character. Also, it is a fact, if not that she wrote naughty novels, that she thought she did. In truth, her more lurid attempts of that kind were, to the mature and discern- ing, tributes to her own innocence. The works in question showed a complete inaptitude for the attractive present. ment of depravity, though it may have been d question whether the inaptitude was intellectual or moral. The inten- tion of these articles was evidently to make the reader "sit up," and they ac- tually had that effect upon some reatl- CTS of tender years, who were unaffected. ly shocked by them, and the works gained in adolescent circles shuddering admiration, as books that girl could not put into the hands of her mother"
 But, after all, this proves nothing. It is upon record thai not only writers O. risky novels, but the most absurd poetesses of passion have settled down into exemplary spouses. Miss Braddon, the veteran of the sensational novel, IS reputed to be, in her private capacity, and when she has scrubbed the ink off her thumbs, a British matron of the straightest sect. It is true that the crimes Miss Braddon deals with are battle, murder and sudden death, and that she mostly abstains from bringin
 blushes to the cheeks of young per- sons. Moreover, while the lady novel ist immediately in question has proved to be incompatible" with one husband. it is not clear that she would have been or that she would be incompatible with another. There is nothing in the case that justifies generalization upon either side, either upon the side of the ma. jority of male persons who maintain the incompatibdlity of literature and the domestic affections or upon the side of the minority who maintain that re. formed literary women make the best wives.-St. Louis Globe-Democrat.