The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-04-09
y orofky Dix Talks.


| when woman doesn't envy a mar
| is when she. looks at his clothes and
sees how ugly and commonplace they
| are, and reflects that the poor crea.
ture doomed to wear them is forevel
cut off from all the thrilling joys 81
planning toilets that will make hi,
rivals green with envy
The one thing, however that makes
up to a woman for all the excitement
and active pleasure she has in her
children. Most men have to be ac-
climated to children, and while they
have an abstract animal affection foI
the offspring when they are little
lobster-colored, wobbly bundles oil
collie, the father doesn't really enjoy
the baby, or especially yearn to hea1
its cries.
To the mother, on the contrary
nothing was ever SO beautiful or in
tellectual as the coUrtenance of the lit
tie cream-cheese- faced infant on heI
breast and she wonders what IN eartl:
makes people willing to pay 81 to
hear Melba when they could listen to
her baby's meiodious yawps.
The pleasures of anticipation arc
proverbially greater than any joys
OF realization, and every mother has
about twenty years of ana Dyed de-
light in which she enjoys all Of the
rapture OF pride of scciag her little
Johnnie elected President of the
United States, and her little sammy
made Comm tnder- ir-Chi2f of the
Army, and her little ii annie a Wall
Street magna1e. and her little Sallie
dazzling the worl, as an actress
Every mother is I'm idealist and gift
ed with powers ut Imagination where
her children are concerned that nah IS
a Jules Ve"ncs and Ride FaggaId's s
widest flight of fancy seem tame and
dull. and in the exercise of these ia
culties woman probably reaches rs
near to perfect happiness as any hui
man being ever knows.
The most beautiful dreams of the
opium fiend were never SO gorgeous,
so rosy, so beautiful as the trance
she lives in about her children. But
pleasure at this prophetic vision of
a child's future is denied to most faith
ers, because men know life and the
world too well, and too much about
what qualities it takes to win sue
cess.
And when occasionally a mothers
dreams are realized, and the child
does achieve something, there is no
other such perfection of gratified am
bition as the mother feels.
Mr.. Barrie relates in his beautiful
story of Margaret Ogilvy that his
mother. who was a great admirer of
Gladstone, never expressed a wish to
be Gladstone himself, but always said:
Il would like fine to have been his
mother" and there can be no, doubt
that every -~eat mans mother tri-
umphs more in his greatness than he
does himself
The final time when a woman has
a better time than a man is when
both are old. No old woman is as for
lern as an old man, and this is true
whether they are millionaires or pau
pers. An old woman makes herself
some sort of home, while an odl man
is utterly dependent on having some
body to do it for him.
Woman attaches somebody TO her.
so that she is not left desolate and
loveless when age comes upon her but
unless a man has children he is apt
to have no human being who is bound
to him by a single tie of affection.
Women also have generally provid-
ed for their I'll age some, interest, such
as clubs or philanthrophy, and they
have at least their knitting While an
old man has absolutely nothing. He
has spent his life in business, and when
he is debarred from that by age he
has nothing to fall back upon, and
is literally bored to death.
So in their last days if not their
early days, women have as good a
time as men.