The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-08-15

of their situation which would preclude
jealousy. quibbling, petty exactions and
the egotism that demands to share her
husbands triumphs.
Ebert Hubbard. who has had troubles
of his own and might know something
about it, has written a thoughtful article
on this subject and attributes the fact
that many artists have made unhappy
marriages to the jealous demands of
wives who would prefer a numbskull
and a nobody. SO he was all their own.
to a genius whom everybody wanted to
invite to dinner. 1t is the autograph
fiend, and the lion-hunter, Mr. Hub
bard thinks, who make life with the
genius impossible to a selfish and jeal-
Gus woman. He admits that the genius
himself is only a man more than half
the time and addicted to disagreeable
habits.
In view of the suit for divorce which
his wife has brought after less then
three years of marriage, a paragraph
from Jack London's Hampton WAGE
Letters, book of last year is not with
out interest. He speaks thus almost
prophetically it would seem of the dis
illusionment of marriage: Our lovers
discover each other to be mere man and
woman after all. That ethereal sub
stance which the man took for the body
of the loved one becomes flesh and
blood, is prone to the common weak
nesses and ills of flesh and blood. He
on the other hand betrays little petu-
lances of disposition, little faults and
predispositions of which she never
dreamed in the prenuptial days and
which she now finds eminently distaste-
full
The truth is that 1t requires an
amount of patience, unselfshness and
common sense amounting almost to gen.
ius for any man, genius or not, and
any woman to live together In peace and
happiness.
A successful marriage and a happy
home are not something in the nature
of an achievement. Unfortunately
there is no training school for wives
and husbands in the many institutions
which advertise to turn out boys and
girls equipped for a successful battle
with existence, and young people
dreaming of loves elysium neglect to
cultivate in all the relations of their
daily lives those qualities which make
a good son or daughter, sister or
brother, companion or friend. no less
than husband or wife.
If a man has a good heart there is
no amount of genius that will make
him a bad husband. and if a woman
has the gifts and graces that make a
good wife she will be able to live COM
fortably with a man in spite of the
autograph fiends and the women who
Just dote on him.
There was Mary Shelley, for instance.
She had more than the usual woes of
the genius's wife to contend with be-
cause Shelley vas forever falling in love
with other women and writing sonnets
to their loneliness, but his wife never
showed that she minded. His most per-
feet love lyrics were not inspired by
Mary Goodwin, although she was the
one lasting love of his life. The others
were mere fancies, forgotten almost as
soon as the poems they inspired were
written. but his wife was his true
friend and counselor until he died He
needed her, and he couldn't have gotten
along without her, and Mary Shelley re-
alizing that she was Indispensable to
him didn't allow him to see that his
vagrant fancies for other women
troubled her, because life without him
would have been insupportable to her
and life with him was only possible as
long as she was unfailingly patient,
sensible, forgiving and kind.