Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1901-12-14
x Gossip for the Ladies. ~

yarns with them. bur the women will ali
| be sitting bolt upright each i'll her own
particular section CARING eeldiy at each
uther and as silent as the sphinx. At
tempt TO break down this icy barrier, and
you do Il ar your peril. They have lead
1 IN the Ladies Home Journal that you
must not make indiscriminate aCduain-
tances while travelling. and if YOU speak
/ 10 one she Will make Il frantic clutch 10
where she has the money sewed up in
her dress. and get 4 ueath-grip on her
pocketboOk, aud turn on YOU Il look tnai
says palmer than words: Il had my sus-
plclon of You from til, first, and now |
know Eou are Il bold thing and no bet
ter than you should be.
Aside from this phase of the question,
however. there is the more serious one
of the lack of compauiOna bleneSS among
women that we see in daily life. and that
makes friendship nothing but a hollow
mockerY. We all know dozens of women
whom we respect for their intelligence
and culture and revere for their virtues,
and love for their amiable qualities. but
now many OF Us know even two with
whom We wOulu voluntarily elect to live!
As a general thing, the less we see of our
friends the better we like them and all
because they have never acquired the art
Of being cOmpanionable.
lou think, perhaps. of one woman who
has none of the startling attractions of
the others, who is neither over-wise or
witty, or pretty, but who has that indie
Unable quality that makes You always
want to have her about, and grip her to
your heart with hooks of steel
she may not say anything worth re-
peating, but she falls into the moods of
those about her, and she laughs with
those wh2 laugh and weeps with those
who Ween;, She is interested in other
people affairs. and is willing to listen
to your hopes and plans, instead of al
ways d!sconrsing about her own. If she
Is highly educated. her knowledge sits
nightly on her. and she isn't forever cor
recting everybody else's history and gram
mar and pronunciation. If she visits you
she doesn't give you over much of her
society. Ii she travels she doesn't eX-
pect to monopOliZe the best seat. and run
the itinerary. She recognizes that other
people may have preferences for certain
things as well as herself If she is a girl
she doesn't try to make every man fall
in love with her, and if she is a married
woman she isn't always fiingng her hus-
band, as if hers were a personal triumph.
INTO every other woman's teeth.
The woman VINO is cOmpanionable. who
Is simply comfortable 20 live with, is such
a rara avis that it frequently occurs to
me to speculate on why girls do not think
1t worth their while to cultivate this fine
art of being agreeable. They don't do il.
Each one believes that she is the it, of
creation, and that it is the duty of the
world to defer to her and make things
pleasant for her, and so she goes serenely
on her way, and we all wonder why it is
that there are so few women you really
like 10 be with for more than fifteen min
uteS AT a time.
To my mind the art of being compan-
lonable is the answer 10 two, at least, Of
the veXed questions that every woman
has to solye-how to keep her husband
and children at home Every engaged
girl Is led 10 believe of course. that her
adoring Augustus desires nothing else
but 10 spend the balance of his naturGI
life in gazing enraptured on her rosy
cheek. Her stern parent has had to
chase HIM home every night at II
0 clock, and she does not apprenend that
she Is going to have any of the troubles
about the staying-Out-at-ni business
that other women have. But, alas, she
finds out that after marriage she can no
more get him in by IL o'clock than be
fore the marriage she could GET him out
and If she is a sensible woman she sits
down and does some hard thinking
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred ii
is because she has not learned tine art of
being companionable, and when the fire
of romantic love burns itself out. as it
is bound TO do. she is not clever enough
to become her husbands chum. She bur.
uthS h!Hl wien HousenOi0 mlSnapS; she
nagS at him for his faults; she grows
querrulous and dissatisfied. or, perhaps.
she merely becomes stupid and unnter-
cSting, and she sends him away from
home, to other men, or other women, for
his companiOnship.
Are yOu going to take your wife with
you on your travelsE' asks one man of
another. according to the comic paper.
"Oh. nc" replied the other, Il am 60
ing on 4 pleasure trip
a bltterer satire and Il more searching
arraignment Of woman's failures as a
wife has never been made ;han is com
pressed in that little story, and the pity
of il is thai it is so true. Look at Il MAJ
and woman on the street both walking
along with wearied and bored air: Oh
serve a couple sitting mp in deadly silence
between the acts of a play. You do not
nave to ask if they are married. You
know.
| have seen a woman, whose boollish
husband was fond of reading aOud az
home, wait until he paused to take
breath and then break in with something
that showed she had not followed a word
nave known women who religiously sat
down upon every fad and home amuse-
ments of their husbands, and ridiculed
their pet theories until the men became
silent and auStere. | know plenty of
families in which there is no cheerful
home gossip about the hearth. All OF
this is woman'S fault. 1t is in her
province to make her home such com
Portable place, and her society so fasci-
na:in- that all others will pail beside it,
Ii she is not the trusted friend and con
tidant of her husband she has only her
SELF to blame.
1t is the same with her children. She
has the first show at them. 1t is her
privilege 10 be their closest friend, the
Sharer of every thought and hope and
joy, and if She finds that her daughter il
going to some other woman with her first
love secrets. or her boy is telling his am
billions to somebody else, let her write
herself down as Il failure. for she has
missed not emily the duty, but the reward
of motherhood.
There may be many qualities that have
a higher sounding title than companion
ahleness. bat the woman who Is always
pleasant and agreeable as n friend who
is her husbands c0ntidant and her chill
drpn : chum is the cement that holds the
world together. Dorothy Dix in New Or
leans Picayune.
a Chat with HousekeeperJ.
LOIS Of little odds aud ends today 10
-ak about. mostly to make the homels