The Savannah morning news., 1904-08-21
|WOMAN'S WORLD

heart Of a three-times widower' If only
| she can be assured that the affection
| she is getting is genuine.
She still clings to one ideal tenacious
". however, and that is that she will
not marry until she finds her ideal.
She doesn't know exactly what that
lis. but il is something between a
demigod and a Count of Monte Cristo.
He must be big and strong and able
10 command events. He must be so
stern that others tremble at his frown,
vet she must be able to bend him
TO her slightest wish. He must rule
her. vet never let her perceive 1t.
He must be soulful and intense, yet
able to make money, only, of course.
you mustn't be able to smell the
grocery or the dry goods on the money.
He must be man of the world, yet
model OF all the virtues.
She doesn't find that kind of a man.
She couldn't He doesn't exist, and
though ii comes with wrench. she
finally tears the ambition out of her
heart to marry her ideal. She begins
then to think of matrimony on COM
nonsense platform, and to realize that
a plain. practical husband, who is
willing to stand for her shopping
ticket, is worth having, even il he
hasn't any warnings after the what
ness of the what, and knows more
about the price of salt Goldfish than
he does about Browning. Moreover,
she begins to find out that she can be
exceedingly fond of a fat. freckled-
faced. sandy-haired man, who doesn't
come within a million miles of realiz-
ing her girlish dreams of the sort of
a man she would permit to lead her
to the altar. Now and then, it is true
as long as she lives in times of do
nestle stress, she will think tenderly
of the ideal she didn't find, and who
would have understood her, but she
never really regrets him.
There is one thing remaining-her
fixed intention of being a perfect wife.
Strange to say, no woman ever doubts
her ability to do this until she marries.
When a girl looks at married woman
and sees that she has gotten dowdy
and slouchy in appearance, that she
has lost that ineffable charm that
comes from a woman trying to please,
that she nags, and frets at her hus-
band, and shows him all the unlovely
angles in her character, and that she
has apparently come to look upon the
man she is married to as nothing more
than a piece of household furniture
that it is indispensable to have about,
but not valuable enough to take care
of-when girl, / say, sees a married
woman in that state of disillusion and
uiSltlu6iOiiiilBt SUG Is HOIlESlly SUOCkeu.
She no more believes that she could
reach that state than she believes she
could become like the ragged beggar
woman on the street, or the criminal
behind the bars.
She sees herself always attractively
gowned, welcoming a husband home
with a sweet smile, and to a dainty
dinner, always amiable, serene, and
competent, managing a home that runs
along on creased skids. and it is Only
after she is tired and worn Wa
wrestling with incompetent servants,
and teething babies, and a husband
whose temper is like a train of fire.
works, that she realizes that she too
has fallen short of her ideal, and fail
ed in her ambition to be perfect wife.
Her last ambition, and the only one
of all she started out with that she
ever achieves, is when she finally
makes up her mind to accept life and
love as they are, and to make the best
of them. BY this time she has dis
covered the hollowness of things. She
knows romance is nothing but the
glamour youth throws over common
place objects and that like poor silver
plating, 1t soon wears off; that ones
ideals are broken reeds on which to
lean, and that love has to be bolster
ed up on bread and butter. BY that
time, also, woman learns TO quit try
ing to reform her husbands little
ways, and make him take soulful views
of things. She takes him as he is, and
when the hour arrives when instead of
sitting up for him at night with her
heart in her mouth, imagining some
body had waylaid him, she can go
calmly to sleep, it marks not the end
of things, as the sentimental might
think, but the beginning of peace and
the real enjoyment of life and matri-
mony. Dorothy Dix,