Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1913-07-12
Advice to a
Young Man
By DOROTHY DIX.

n YOUNG man, who is ambitious
| II and who feels within himself
L n the ability to rise in the world,
is very much in love with a pretty young
girl who has no aspirations beyond a
new dress and going to Coney Island or
a cheap theater
The young man is making enough
money for them to be married on and
| live in fair comfort in their present
status in life. but he is not satisfied with
| this
He is anxious to get an education and
study a profession. To this the sweet
/ heart objects. She isn't willing for the
young man to make his way through col
| Iege. She doesn't see any use in an edu-
cation, any how. When the young man
/ talks TO her about books it bores her to
| death. and when he wants to take her
/ to hear good lecture or good music she
/ offsets it with a proposal to take in a
vaudeville show
The young man wants to know wheth-
er he should give up his books or his
/ girl, or If there is any way in which he
could interest his fiancee in intellectual
pursuits and kindle the fires of ambition
| in her soul
To answer the last question first, I
would say, no. The homely old proverb
about the impossibillty of making a silk
! purse out of a sow's ear is still gospel
! true. There is no way to make clod
the tastes OF a woman who was born
without a perception OF the finer things
of life than you can change the color Of
her eyes, or the height of her stature.
Born That Way.
| The girl who does not perceive the
advantage Of an education, or the neces-
/ sity for one. who yawns over even a
novel and who doesn't see why anybody
reads the daily paper, who is absolutely
and totally unintellectual was simply
| born that way. There's some lack in
her mental equipment, and nothing that
/ her husband can do is going to supply
| it, She was Just born that way, and
| that way she will stay to her dying day,
and it isn't her fault.
Such a woman may be the best Of
/ housekeepers, the most devoted of wives,
| but she is no mental companion for an
/ intelligent man. Many men marry this
/ kind of a girl because she has a pretty
/ face, and then torture her trying to
make her clever-something she can
never be. This is cruelty unjust He
who marries a girl who frankly admits
that she doesn't like to read and has no
ambition should never bother her with
/ books, or reproach her with her lack Of
/ progressiveness.
As to which he should take when a
man is called upon to choose between his
| career and his sweetheart, 1 should say
| take the career every time, because an
ambitious man soon learns to hate any
woman who is the handicap that pre-
vents him winning in the race of life.
When even those that we love become a
burden upon us that keep us from sue
| cess-good- bye love! This Is unromantic.
but true.
Many an ambitious man finds out
after marriage that he has saddled him
{ self unknowingly with a wife who can
not and will not keep pace with him,
/ and who holds him back from the
achievements that he is capable of max
| ing Such a man is the victim of a hard
and bitter fate, but in honor there is
nothing left for him but to bear with
whatever fortitude he can the misfor-
tune that he has brought upon himself.
A Chance.
/ But the man who finds out before
marriage that the girl he thinks himself
| in love with is not his mental and spir-
| itual mate. that she can not think his
/ thoughts, that she is not interested in
the pursuits that he is interested in; |
/ that she does not wish to reach the goal
toward which his feet are set, has still |
chance TO save himself from mar
riage that is bound to bring misery !
both to himself and the woman.
For what attracts him to her is only |
the ephemeral charms of her youth and
good looks, and when they are gone.
as they must be in a few years. moth
ing remains but the memory of the sac.
rihce he has made for her, and the
irksomeness of a tie that binds him to
wife with whom he has not one thing
in common.
In that day a man remembers what
he might have been and is not. He sees
other men, no better equipped than
himself, climbing up TO the top of the
ladder while he sits at the bottom with
his dull and commonplace wife And in
that day he sees with fatal clearness
just how much of the earth earthly is the
woman who is not animated by anything
except a desire for the things that make
for her physical comfort.
Matrimony can mean the closest COM
partnership that two human beings ever
attain 1t can be literally two souls
with but single thought, and It can
mean a lonesomeness that is as great as
Robinson Crusoe ever suffered on his
desert isle And when IT is that it is
the abomination of desolation.
The Solitude.
Think of what the ambitious man
suffers when he is married TO a woman
who never wants to advance one step,
who never sees why he wants TO make
a change, and whom he has to fight
at every step of his progress. Think
of the solitude of soul of a man married
to a woman with whom he can never
discuss a book he has read or a play
he has seen, or an opera he has heard:
who never even comprehends anything
that he tries TO tell her that is more
psychic than the price OF butchers meat.