News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1914-03-18


The wife may have been led to wor
ship at the shrine of a food fad through
an article printed on the "woman's
page that becomes her gospel. She
may feel that the physical salvation
Of the race comes from eating bread
three days old and may unwsely seek
to force him to discipleship, because
she "knows it is good for him." He
may prefer shorter life soothed with
fresh bread rather than longer eX-
istence on the new terms.
Let her revel in her petrified. paSse
nutriment to her hearts content. but
she is giving postgraduate courses in
hypocrisy and protest when she makes
meals at home an ordeal as he silently
munches the dry crusts of her theory.
He suffers it as a temporary trial, feel
ing confident that the reign of stale
ness will be brief. and lets his magma
ton run riot in the thought of the
| antined delicacies he will order down.
town for lunch just to square himself
somehow with his self respect
If he cannot be brought to accept
| Ibsen as an inspired apostle of opti-
mism and the joys of living on the
higher levels. if Ibsen really seems to
him to be nearly as cheerful as a ride
in tunnel on a dark night with the
car lights eXtinguished and he does
not want to invest in her enthusiasm
for her new found literary god as 1.-The
dramatic genius of the ages" let them
sweetly and smilingly agree to differ
if argument develops fervor. He may
later forsake his well thumbed Shake
speare should the higher illumination
come to him and flood his soul with
light
If her adoption Of some new philoso-
ply of living brings to her calmness,
rest, peace and the solution of lifes
problems. making her more kind. gen.
tie charitable. loving and unselfish.
and seems / constant inspiration, it is
unwise to seek to capture his CONVEX
sion by an unrelenting assault of argu-
ment, protest, discussion and appeal.
He has right to his option of non
acceptance as fully and freely as her
choice of acceptance. If her living
does not vindicate the rightness and
tinality of her belief. if her life does
not convince, her arguments will only
irritate, but never convert.
Respect for each others individuality
touches in some way the heart of every
problem of married life. This respect
Is based on justice, and justice wrongs
no rights, but rights every wrong. 1t
is the Golden Rule raised from mere
theory to the dignity of a living real
ity. In the home it means freedom,
right, sympathy, tolerance. harmony
and peace. Determining that neither
shall suffer from the other, they are
strengthened to suffer for and with
each other whatever trials life may
bring.
This respect has two vital phases:
We must not only respect the in
dividuality of the other, but must de-
mand that our own be equally respect
ed. While never invading the rights
of others we should with equal firm
ness resent the invasion of our own.
This implies no petty captiousness in
trifes, no supersensitiveness of an in
famed egotism. no disregard of the
privilege of making little compromises
and concessions, the joy of sacrifices
and surrenders that bring new hap
piness to love. Neither has the right to
make the other the victim of his or |
Io, Itu +,rro
ny. meanness or injustice. and either is
wrong to submit.
We are unjust to ourselves when we |
meekly suffer what we have no right |
to suffer. 1t is not a virtue of noble |
bearing; it is the vice Of cowardice. We |
are sapping the very citadel of our |
own strength: we are weakening our
selves for the battle of life, starving |
our very soul.
There are grim tragedies of which |
the world may know nothing in do |
nestle life where the wife lives trem- |
blingly in the shadow of husbands
fierce temper or his wild uncontrolled. |
senseless jealousy. Smiling. bright,
gay, witty. he seems the very life of |
the social company gathered round his
table. But there may come to her,
seemingly only a table length but
really a whole world apart from him,
a quick gasp and tremOr, with pain
in her heart as though a hand of steel
were suddenly gripping it with dead
ening pressure when she sees for sec
ond a certain look on his face that no
eyes but her own noted, none might
even understand had they seen.
We hear much of the nobility and
the moral grandeur of bearing and for
bearing. but there are times when bear
ing becomes weakness. a cowardice.
a crime against self respect. Peace at
any price is not peace-it is smothered
war. Things are never settled until
they are settled right. The wife's time
for meeting such temper was at the be-
ginning of her married life. at its first
in its faintest phases.
before it had fattened and grown
tyrannOus through nonresistance. In
The beginning she was at the maximum
Of her power to cope with the wrong:
the evil was at its minimum: the man
himself was more pliable and more
easily led and controlled.
In the beginning should she have
mot tha iSCr1a "a firm, |