The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1911-05-04
THE MANS
SIDE OF Ii.

More than anything else, I admire
in men their ability to be silent when
adverse conditions asail them.
Women like to talk of their trou-
bles. They want sympathy. advice,
commentator, and they 60 out Of
their way to get it. But a man, I'M
less he has streak Of the feminine
in him, squares his shoulders and
bears his burden alone. e.
It is perhaps because f this self
control in men that women think of
themselves as downtrodden. They find
their sufferings analysed in fiction and
in fact, and they do not realize that
their passion for self-revelation works
Injustice to the other sex.
Men rarely write novels which dis
sect their inner emotions; such walls
come from women. So women learn
to think of their husbands as satisfied,
phlegmatic or, at the best, stoical.
A man, discussing the other day,
1.-THE Light That Failed said that he
considered unnatural the scene where
the hero goes blind. "a man does not
show his heart to a friend at such
crisis" he said. my grandfather,
when he learned that the rest of his
life was to be lived in darkness, went
to his room and stayed there for a
day. From that time until he died he
never mentioned his affliction. Men
bleed inwardly. They do not show
their wounds to the world"
Think of that, you women who COM
plain and who believe that men have
no feeling. You consider your hyster-
les a sign of extreme sensibility, but
~1@ - 1fr0 r,f
his clinched fist may mean more of
real suffering than you can under
stand.
Men rarely whine. They may be ir-
ritable ,tyrannical, aggressive, but they
keep silent on the subject of domestic
troubles and financial woes, with the
result that they are not credited with
depth of feeling.
It is the exceptional woman who
does not confide her troubles to some
one; 1t is the exceptional man who
tells them. Life is unequal" cries the
wife who is unhappy. 81 suffer because
I am weak, and women have no
rights" Such a woman has not the in
tuiticns which would tell her that her
husband suffers also. She sees only
the exterior, and judges him by her
self
We hear much of women's wrongs,
but men could tell a tale of injustice
which might open the eyes CT their &C
cusers. Many a story of married I'M
happiness might be made to end hap
PLY If the wife could only under
stand that her husbands reticence is
not sign of lack of feeling. To get
underneath the outer shell of mans
hardness is often to find something
very wonderful The woman who sets
herself to learn what is in her hus-
bands heart may find there treasures
undreamed of. Love is not thing of
surface demonstration. Yet many wo-
men believe it so. and thus silent,
steadfast men are misunderstood.
There is something pathetic about the
man who, loving and suffering, is in
articulate. He cannot voice what he
feels, and his wife, who emphasizes
every little woe, judges him incapable
of emotion. If such wives would rea-
lie at is only by trying to under
stand others that we can get our own
hearts understood" they might find
the key to domestic bliss. In many
matters women's wrongs cry for re-
dress, but the mems side of the ques-
ton is not to be ignored or tc be set
aside because of silence under stress
Of circumstance.