Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1903-05-02
DRIFTED APART.
Wife Fails to Keep Up with the Mental
Progress of Her Hus-
band.

Thirty years ago n certain young man
married certain young woman and peo-
pie said it was a good match. He was
poor and, having had to make his own
way from boyhoed, had not had so much
of school as she; but he had a quick
mind and tireless industry and he was
kind and good. She was handsome, had
good brain and brought him little
money.
For thirty years the man has been
adding to his knowledge and improving
his education. He has had what may be
called a career in business. He is rich,
full of ideas, alert of intellect, vigorous
of body His mind is in touch with
events and with thought throughout the
world. He is an entertaining talker and
is interesting because he takes an inter
est. No college graduate shows better
at a dinner or a public affair, none is
more fertile Of ideas, more sound in judg-
ment. more correct and cultivated in ex-
preston. He has read, studied, kept up
with the times, met men and protited by
his intercourse with them, and has turned
every situation INTO a school and every
experience into lesson. Living has edu-
Gated him. He is part of all that he has
seen.
Tine woman, during these thirty years,
has stood III one spot. She has suffered
her mind to stagnate. She has neither
read nor thought. She retains the same
ideas, the same prejudices, the same in
terests, that she had on her marriage
day, and she has added none. Her hus-
band has pressed books upon her and
begged her TO read them, has taken her
travelling. has given her all imaginable
opportunities of getting new ideas and
broadening her intellect. but she has
steadfastly kept her mind insulated.
Between this woman and her husband
intellectual communion is now impossible.
solid wall has been built up between
them. His mind is concerned with many
things in literature. science. politics, the
affairs of the whole wide world. Hers
harps on household matters, the preserv-
ing of fruit, the difficulty of getting and
Keeping servants, the delinquencies of the
-laundTyman. These she dins into his
ears at meals and he listens patiently in a
dead. dull way.
Once in a while, when she sees him
brighten at the approach of some other
and cleyerer woman, she feels keeEly the
difference in his manner. She knows that
he is faithful, that he never Sights her
for any other woman, but she cannot help
feeling n touch of jealousy that other
women should awaken in him an interest
that her conversation never stirs up.
Curiously enough, she blames him and
not herself for the change. Doesn't she
still feel the old interest in what he
saysF Isn't it he, not she, that is
changedf Must not then, the fault lie
in him? She reasons, however. that he
has merely gone the way of all husbands,
and that it is the nature of man to be-
come Indifferent to the woman that has
gwen up all for his sake. This philos-
ophy consoles and flatters her. 1t is the
philosophy of good many such wives.
This couple get along we'll enough to-
gether. The wife is kind-hearted, sweet
tempered, a good nurse, a good house
keeper and has not quite lost her figure
or her looks, Notwithstanding her 80
years. The husband is used TO her and
she 90 him. Long ago they learned how
to manage each other. On occasions they
even revive some of the tenderness Of
their youth. He sends her a gift on her
birthday; she reminds him in some pretty
way of the anniversary of their we'd
ding.
| The comparative success of their mar
ried life seems TO intensity the tragicality
of their intellectual enlargement. What
| a perfect union it might be if she had
| kept up with rim! How the communion
| OF mind between them would have ideal
| lied and made poetry of Their joint lives,
Their conversation, animated, interesting,
| wide-ranging, would have been a serial
epithalamium; lifelong nuptial cantice
/ instead of the monotonous plain-song that
| it is.
1t would be easy enough to reverse this
fable; to tell of wives that mounted to
intellectual heights while their husbands
plodded along on the pre-matrimonial
level; but for the moral, one case is SUI.
| ficient.
Husband and wife, if they would be
completely happy, must grow in the same
general direction and at equal pace. II
one goes forward faster than the Other
they drift apart. Relatively neither i,
the same A man morrias his intpllpcfu IN
equal and vows to love and cherish her
If, through her own fault, she ceases L
be his Intellectual equal, can he keep hi
promise without being fOrsworn? Can
he cleave Intellectually to the wife of hi
middle age without being unfaithful L
the wife of his youth? Is it constancy t,
remain true to one that continual!
changes? AS well say the mariner fol
lows true course that steers by tn
shifting moon.--San Francisco Bulletin.
| -s-
Raising Collard Seed in GEORGIA.