The leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1895-1905, 1903-09-23
The Real Cause of Unhappy Marriages.

The real moral of the sensation
al Campbell divorce case, says
Dorothy Dix in the Chicago Am
erican, that is now disturbing one
of our Eastern cities is not, as
Mrs. Campbell seems to think,
that you mustn't marry a million
aire or that millionaires make the
worst husbands, but that you
should marry in your own class
somebody with the same interest
in life that you have and the same
tastes in politics and pie.
Mr.. Campbell was sporty and
wanted his wife to drink cocktails
with him, smoke cigarettes and go
to the races. Mrs. Campbell
wanted him to escort her to
church. Hence the rift within
the lutte, and incidentally the
breaking of the crockery.
With good-fellow wife the
man might have been the most de-
voted Of spouses, while united to
a nice curate undoubtedly the
course of true love would have
flowed smoothly to the end with
the lady.
The case of mismated couples is
not an unusual one. Indeed, there
seems fatal surety with which
! people play at cross purposes
| about this, the most important
matter in their lives. The. man,
for instance, who is a bon vivant
and fussy about his eating, in
variably picks out wife who be-
lleves in plain living and high
thinking, and they wrangle about
the table the balance of their days.
Preachers have mania for
marrying fiighty and frivolous
little creatures, instead of the sis
ter in Israel who would be their
proper and congenial mate; while
the pious gill who leads the fe-
male prayer meeting is foreor-
dained to marry a rounder whom
she will nag into drunkard's
grave.
/ Half of the domestic friction
might be abated if people would
only marry in their own class, for
| there is no weakness with which
we are so sympathetic as the one
we have ourselves; no taste is SO
fascinating as the one we share;
no people so interesting and intel
ligent as those who think as we
4 do; no fault we are so ready to for
give as the one to which we also
are subject.
The greatest fallacy in the
world is the theory of the attrac-
tion of opposites in matt imony.
What makes for peace and happi-
ness is agreeability and sympathy, I,
not contradiction and argument.
The people who jar US are those
who sing off our key, not those
whose voices blend harmoniously
with our own bass or treble.
The trouble is that too many
! men marry women believing they
can mould them over to suit their
tastes, and too many women marry
men thinking they can reform
them and win them over according
to their own little patternof good
ness. Both parties would save
themselves lot of misery If they
would find out before marriage
what they want in a life partner
instead of waiting until after
wards. It is little late after a
Imam is married to saint to dis
cover that what he really wants is
a wife with sporting blood in her
Iveins, or for the woman who de-
liberately weds d giddy youth
lahout town to find out that her
real affinity is a asettlement worker
with lofty ideas and serious views
lof lie.
More than that it is unjust.
ii If the time ever comes when we
lgrow wise enough to marry peo.
lple with the same religion and
politics, and who like the same
kind Of cooking We do, the di-
vOrce courts will make ain assign
ment fol- lack Of business.