Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1913-02-25
(By Dorothy Dix

| mCny, according 10 correspondent
of this paper who thinks that he has
solved the problem of why people
marry.
Are not most marriages the result
of vanity and not of lover" he asked.
"A man marries a woman because it
please his vanity to win her away
from his rivals A woman marries a
man because it gratifies her vanity to
be preferred above other women, and
because she is enraptured with hts
praise and batteries of her"
Of course, nobody knows why any
body marries anybody else. Still less
do they know why they married the
particular individuals that they did.
That is the great mystery of the uni
verse, the sex call that is the pro-
foundest secret Of nature.
But outside of this without doubt my
corresp ondent is right, and vanity has
to do with the making of mo ,e
matches than ever Cupid has. It is
vanity that makes marriages, and it
is vanity that breaks them when the
people who have won each other by
playing upon their self-esteem grow
careless or tired of ministering to
egotism. The use of soft soap smooths
the may of many feet to the altar, and
the lack of it makes a toboggan slide
to Reno.
1t is a proverb of the boudoir that
no girl ever has just one beau. She
has many or none for men are like
sheep in this respect. They all want
to go where other men go. Every man
is eager to dance with the girl over
whose ball program other men are
| fighting, but no man save the martyr
will dance with the lone maiden who
papers the wall. Nothing inspires a
man with such mad desire to take q
girl out to the theatre as for her to
refuse to go two or three times be-
cause she has previous engagements.
The woman who has dozen propos-
ais will have a dozen more, whereas
the woman who wants to marry will
never have any at all. You could make
any good looking girl a belle by en-
ployfng three good looking young men
to hang about her for six months.
They would toll in all the other eligi-
BILE men in the community, and she
could have her pick of them, because
it would please their vanity to marry
woman whom other men admire AMI
desire, and also it would stimulate
sense of rivalry to know other men to
be in pursuit of her.
Undoubtedly the reason why many
men grow tired of their wives is be-
cause this flip to their vanity is re-
moved with marriage.
They have captured the prize, and
since, after marriage, nobody els1
appears to want to dispute their own
ership in it, it becomes cheap and
worthless in their eyes. Many a neg
lected wife would find her husband
turned into a lover again if she were
about to be snatched away from him.
1t is the knowledge that she is his fo'
keeps and that he can't lose her that
makes him Indifferent to her.
Women marry just as much for van
ity as men do Most girls do accept
the first man that proposes to them,
and every girl is tempted to, no mat
ter how unsuitable he is, or how home
ly, or dull, or uncouth, he may be, r.
how little she may ever have thought
Of him before, just because such a gor-
geous, surging wave of gratifed van
ity goes over her at the realization
that she has been able to inspire sent
= ment in a mans heart 1t is her mi
tial experience of the success Of be
ing an attractive woman.
And she never gets over this feel
b ing. Her vanity is always a harp witt
a thousand strings upon which a mar
can play as long as she lives. 1t j,