The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1900-11-24
DOROTHY DIX SAYS:
Young Husbands Are Too Much
Trouble.

iounS HUSBANDS are 100 Much
49, Trouble. ~ 81.
New York journal: The mania among
literary women for marrying men
younger than themselves that at first.
was thought to be merely freak ap-
pears to be becoming confirmed habit.
Lady Randolph Churchill, Mrs. Frances
Hodgson Burnett and Mrs. Langtsy
have done 1t. Miss wilkins and Mrs.
crugera threaten to do 1t. Strictly
speaking 1t is. of course, a personal pc
culiarity. A woman Of forty and over
may be presumed to know her own
mind. II she elects to marry boy and
raise up husband in the way she
wants him to go. 1t is her own affair.
Granting the right OF every one to In
dulge her own tnstc in matrlmony-no
matter how blzarrc-still, a woman
wedding man much her Junior is al
ways spectacle OF such rash and
reckless daring. 1t is bound to challenge
the attention of the thoughtful.
To begin with. 1t Is much easier. as
every woman knows, to catch hus-
band than 1t Is to hold him after you
get him. There are animals you can
never be sure you have thoroughly do
mesticated until after they are dead.
Men belong to this genus.
Besides, there are few two-handed
games that are continuously exciting.
Even the woman who holds the trump
cards of youth and beauty does not al
ways win out. What. then, must be the
difficulties OF the situation when. with
the clear, second sight that comes after
marriage, the youthful bridegroom per.
celves that he has let himself In for an
existence with no more thrills to 1t
than playing cribbage with his mother?
Then there is the burden of perpetual
youth which the woman must assume.
The privilege of growing old, with all
its perquisites. is one we do not suffi-
ciently, appreciate. From this blessing
the mature woman with a young hus-
band is forever debarred She must al
ways engage in a frantic effort to be
young, or II she can't be young to be as
young as she can. Every new wrinkle
is calamity; every gray hair a catas-
trophe: every additional inch Of belt
measure. is q tragedy.
She can never hope to enjoy that lux
urious Indian summer of life when a
woman let's outiher stays, smashes her
peroxide bottles pitched her rouge pot
IN the fire and abandons herself to be-
Ing frankly middle aged. and no bet
ter looking than God made her.
For her romance the elderly bride is
condemned to be q feminine Ponce de
Leon, forever searching for the foun-
tain of cterna. youth. Her path leads
by way of the corset maker, the dietIst,
the complexion specials. and the mas
sageur. What she endures at their
hands will never be told Men have
been martyred and canonized rs saints
for, less sufferings, less herolcally en-
dured.
The young husband must also be
amused. There is the awful alterna-
tive OF turning him over to the tender
mercy Of pretty girl of his own age
or of the elderly wife treading the
measure Of his amusements with him.
Alas. afte. forty we are no longer so
young as we were. We don't take the
same interest in Views from high points
that we did when we had less avoirdu-
pois and more breath. We see more
rheumatism than romance in fogGy
nights on the water. We begin to rea-
lie that the Orientals know what they
are about when they hire the other
people to do their dancing for them.
Dare she give In to her natural yca-n-
Ing for comfortable rocking chair and
the forty winks to which her age enti-
ties her? Never! She must trip the
two-step, despite twinges of incipIent
govt She must be gay, glddy and girl
lsh at whatever cost. She must keep
him interested and amused, and enter
tanning youth Is the hardest and least
remunerative work ever undertaken BY
sober adult Of sound mind
None of us are insens!ble to the
charms OF youth. 1t Is perhaps only nat
ural that lady novelist who has spent
many years depicting heroes who were
young. handsome and gallant should at
last desire to possess real live speciz
men herself. but while we admire the
intrepid spirit 1t shows, we can but de-
nlore the Judgment that prompts her to
marry him. A young husband isn't
really worth the trouble he costs.