The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-07-27

shiny weather of a perfumed summer
morning; an suddenly a sharp tingle,
an icy chill, and the frost that fairly
burns is upon one Who is there will
blame the household that scatters and
the husband that flies? 1t is quite pos
sible that in the next house that the
husband chances to enter serenity
reigns and points the difference and
accents the evaporation, and he re-
turns to his own home reluctantly and
with a sort of suppressed hostility
ready for attack. Could anything be
more destructive to marital relations,
reducing them more quickly to an af-
fair of banal and commonplace con-
tiguity?
And as there is nothing like a quick
and hot temper for running the peace
and pleasure of a home. there is no
swifter agency than the same ebullient
force in the running of beauty. What
frowning lines it digs between the
eyes, what ugly, downward curves OF
the lips, to say nothing of the injury
to complexion by the bilious reaction
or through the enlargement of veins
by the undue redness of rage, or of
the settled expression left upon the
countenance for which we have no
better word than malignity. That
countenance is certainly less inviting
than the face where smiles shed their
sunshine. There are husbans who can
tame the shrew; there are husbands
who simply drop her and have done
with her. Heaven pity those who en-
dure her!
But, on the other hand, the wives
are not a few who are at liberty to
think very unpleasant things of the
masculine temper. They are of the
women who say There is a difference
in men, but husbands are much of a
muchness," whatever that exactly
means. Their husbands are of the
sort, it may be, whose wit and sar-
casm are admired abroad modified by
that frank air which causes them
to be know there as good fellows"
but within their own daars all things
are target for their scorn. They are
the high and mighty sort whose bit
ing satire annihilateS liberty, individ-
uality, almost the separate soul itself
or, if it fail to do so, lets the family
draw free breath only when the mas
ter of it is out of the house or they
are. Yet wherever they go their in
ner history is known by the cowed
and subdued air, the timid start or
the appealing eyes that look as if they
were waiting for release. Or if the
head of the unhappy house is not of
this nature, he may be of the surly
sort, that finds nothing to its wind
at home and frets and fuses and frets
again till nerves are worn to ravel-
ings and love is lost in the endeavor
to please, in the continual failure, in
indignation, in ceasing to care whether
one pleaSeS or not. There are some
individuals who are born with their
nerves uncovered, raw, and on edge.
They ought to be shut up in an asy-
lum suited to their condition. Men or
women, they should never be allowed
to marry, the race ought not to be
poisoned with their virus.
But with the major part of our viz
ems and our snarlers the indulgence
in temper is a pure selfshness. There
is a highly seasoned personal enjoy
ment to them in letting their temper
have free course; they do not deny
themselves the pleasure; they mount
their hobby and ride it to death. And
it is like any other drunkenness-car-
ried far, it becomes uncomfortable and
mania.
And is there husband or wife whose
fancy whose love, whose tenderness,
even whose good opinion, is not in
danger of extinction under the work.
ings of a malicious mania? Love must
perish in that degree of interstellar
cold accompanying the east wind made
flesh, be the flesh male or female
Even death, which makes people for
getful of so many faults in the dead
never dulls the edge of that unac-
| knowledged sense of freedom in the
| party who happens to be left behind