The Pleasantville press., 1914-04-18

Learns to Like the
Taste. pertinent ina
may overturn
and swamp it. They say that absence
makes the heart grow fonder," but 1t
is not always fonder of the one left
behind. Brief separations may be
loves tonics, but long ones are often
loves narcotics.
When one member of the home firm
voluntarily takes a long solitaire vaca-
ton and the other stays at home in
loneliness. Cupid. though blind, sees
trouble ahead. With two who love
each other the temporary separation
may be the thin edge of the wedge of
a permanent growing apart.
These unnecessary solo vacations
force each into a new environment in
which the other has no part. They
lessen the sweetness of mutual depend
ence. They break the continuity of
loving conference and constant conf
dence. They make it easier for each
hand in hand with the other They
add in many ways to the complexity
of home life, often creating restless,
vague sense of doubt. 1t is not always
easy to piece again the broken threads
into the old fabric of absolute unity,
trust and dependence Some note of
discord creeps into the music of life
for them both, and neither may be
quite able to silence 1t.
The danger of these summer vaca-
tions apart is not when they are taken
reluctantly and regretfully because of
the pressure of compelling conditions,
when business calls the husband away
on some necessary trip, when the wife
takes the little ones out for a visit to
the old folks. when either is i'll and is
forced to go away and circumstances
forbid both going, when a sickly child
requires change of air, breath of pine
woods or the inyigorating tonic of the
sea. The very inevitability of vaca-
tion, accepted under protest, may not
lessen for an instant the constant heart
hunger of each for the other: it may
really intensity 1t.
But the regular exodus of the wife
because she has a restless desire to
get away somewhere. because she has
friends who insist on her accompany
ing them or she fears the neighbors
will think she cannot afford to go
away or her selfish desire for personal
pleasure throws into the shadows all
thought of the loneliness and other
hardship 1t may entail on her husband.
These are the forms of voluntary sep
aration for weeks and months that are
dangerous Sometimes they even prove
a short cut from matrimony to ali
mony OF the twenty-seven explana-
tions by which she may finally secure
his consent twenty-five are merely
weak excuses, and the other two are
shaky reasons that would not even have
deceived herself for a moment in the
first year or two of their married life.
These separations are always hard
est for the one who is left. He in the
city, still attending to his monotonous
round of daily business and duties,
goes home at night to a lonely house,
eats where he can and walks through
empty rooms until they grow unbeara-
BILE In their grim isolation. If he real
ly cares deeply for her he pictures
her walking on the beach in her dain-
ty new dress with the parasol to
match, sitting ON the wide yeranda of
a summer hotel in the evening in the
midst of merry group, laughing and
jesting at trif1es, or, in Imagination,
sees her rowing across the silvered
waters of a moonlit lake with a gay
party of friends.
There is a feeling of restless rebel
lion that now he forms no part of her
living. In his honest heart he may try
to make himself believe that he is glad
she is having good time and that he
does not begrudge her single hour of
happiness, sunshine and new joy that
may come to her, but down deep in
his heart there Is note of insisteni
protest that she can possibly be happy
away from him when the separation
is of her choosing.
If she writes of the loneliness she
cannot bear apart from him he invol.
UNFAIRLY wonders why then does she
stay away week after week with nc
word of return, why does she thus
condemn herself to the misery of the
continued absence, the awful days she
pictures? He may have pride of love
that keeps back his pen from urging
her return. He may feel that If hel
heart does not make her cut her visif
short and come back he does not care
for his words to do so.
He may study her letters with undue
criticism. reading new meanings into
words and phrases. He does not like
the references to "the young man from