The Eureka sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1902-current, 1913-07-05
THE CAUSES OF
MARRIAGE INCOMPATIDIuTY
By Dorothy Dix

divorced the VILE OF MS YOUTH, because
he has outgrown her.
"Ihave gone the way of men. the bet
ter way" be says frankly; lit 10 the
better way because 1t is the way of prog
ress. A man of talent and ambition
must 60 on If hi. wife turns mulish
and bAlky, il is inevitable hat their
ways part. The man gives the m
a chance. II she refuses TO take it and
to keep pace with him, and he a worthy
running mate, il is her own fault that
she sees him disappearing in a cloud Of
duet.
81 gave my wife a chance to develop
with me. l provided enough money for
leisure for her to study and improve
herself, to keep house better. to dress
better. TO mingle with people who are
helpful and stimulating She refused
to take advantage of any of the oppor-
tunities / offered her.
IL am sorry hat nv wife would not
go with me. / would have preferred
that she should, hut the inevitable has
happened. had to progress, and she
would not keep step with me-so l have
left her."
This successful man has stated a
brutal truth in a brutal way. IL is the
tragedy of achievement that so often
spells domestic misery, for among those
who sit in the grand stand and cheer
the victor as he wins the race there is
seldom his wife. She. poor. dear lady.
has been left far. far behind. somewhere
in the first quarterstretch.
America leads the world in the num-
Der of it's divorces and the amoun OF it's
domestic infelicity. Undoubtedly one
of the reasons of this is because we have
no fixed classes. and such wide oppor-
tunities that the man who begins at
the lowest rung of the social ladder not
infreQuently ends his career on the top
of il.
This makes it impossible for him to
know just h qualities he will need
III q WIFE, Auu ucuCC duus u thO uabk Is
of matrimony. Abroad people stay
more or less consistently in ''that sta
ton of life to which it has pleased
heaven to call them" as the prayer book
y Also. as a general thing. they
marry accordingly. II a man is a.duke
he marries a woman of his own social
$1,000 .od -ho andaratands tho d1ch-
ess business. On the contrary. il he is
a bricklayer he expects to be q brick
layer all the balance of his days. and he
espouses another bricklayer's daughter
and they live humbly and peacefully
ever after
But in America the man who began
and who married a woman designed by
nature to be a b~ricklayer's or mechanics
wife, not infrequently comes to occupy
a seat in the Senate, or even the presi-
Dental chair, or he becomes a multi-mil-
lionaire with the power of a king. and
more than a kings way of living. And
Mrs. Wife stays just where she was.
She would still be an admirable washer
woman or patcher of trousers. but she
is utterly unified TO be the wife of her
husband as he is at present.
That a gifted husband should out
grow his commonplace wife is very sad
1t is also very sad when a gifted woman
outgrows Der commonplace husband
Yet the one happens as often as the
other, and there is no more significant
difference between the sexes than the
way in which men aud women meet this
catastrophe in their lives.
When a man realizes that be has out
grown his wife. that she no longer
speaks his language. nor shares hi'
thoughts, and that il is as tedious &c
explain things to her as il is to a child,
he is at first impatient, and then con
temptuous. Then he begins to neglect bel
and seek the companionship of women
who belong to the new world into which
he has passed, aud which he knows his
wife can never really enter.
The woman who has outgrown hel
husband suffers all that the man doel
who has outgrown his wife, and more
because a woman loves to look up to heI
husband. she loves to admire him. and
when the time comes that she can NJ
longer do SO hers is the agony OF the
worshipper whose idol is shattered ant
whose God has proved to have feet Of
clay.
IL is always a tragedy when either
husband or wife outgrows the other
but when it happens the man usually
sacrifices his wife. while the woman
offers up herself or the altar.