Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-11-04
By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

Copyright, 1915, Star Company.
Just as every child puzzles his par
ent and his pastor, at Some period b.
the query, who made God so per
iodieally is society puzzled by the fol
lowing query:
Why isn't a good man justified ir
marrying a woman who has erred?
| Judging by the ethics of society
such an act is invariably to his dis.
credit. Doesn't he deserve credit above
and here on earth for reclaimine
! the woman he loves from Il hopeless
better? Social ostracism, l know, is
the price they must often pay. The
| decision of man; not God.
| Since it was man himself who first
| started the idea that woman was for
ever lost" If she erred through the
emotions or the passions, and saved
| If she possessed no other virtue but
chastity, 1T would seem that he has
the right to overrule his own law,
should he wish to do So and take to
wife the woman whose great mistake
some man was to blame for
Yet, having built his wall and So
ciety having barbed it at the top, it
proves to be a perilous or at least
uncomfortable, undertaking, when he
attempts to scale it.
Not long ago | heard an intelligent
and broad-minded man assert as a
fact that no woman VINO had erred,
from whatever cause or combination
of causes, could afterward, however
perfectly mated and married, become
the mother OF we'll balanced and finely
organized children.
Demanding proof I was left with
only the speakers assertion. Yet
I some of the most usefuf and notably
worthy people of the world have been
| branded by society as ''iiiegitImate,
t,,e 80, l., 9
noble wives and excellent mothers of
good children who have risen out of
the ashes of error to new birth of pure
womanhood.
At the same time, in every social
circle in the land, can De found spot
less mothers of reckless children, who
have inherited the fathers vices.
There is one reason why it is more
difficult for a man to reclaim an err
| ing woman than for a woman to re-
claim an erring man. Because of the
| two codes of morals man has made for
the two sexes. the woman who falls
usually looses her self-respect sooner
than does the man and falls to a lower
| depth of mental abasemenr.
She becomes more reckless and it is
more difficult for her to reform. The
| laws of the world render the under
| taking peculiarly painful and she fire.
quently returns to her ola life of folly
| in despair when all her aspirations
and inclinations are for better
course of conduct.
The best thing for a man to do who
contemplates marrying and reforming
a repentant woman is 20 take her to
new scenes and surround her with
new friends and to let the mantle of
silence cover her past. In no way
should the subject be rererred to after
he makes the woman his wife and by
every act and word snould he en-
deavor to build new life for her
and to obliterate the old from her
thoughts.
Unless he can do this he had best
not attempt to achieve the impossi-
bic or to force the world to accept
her. And to live socially ostracized
in the world is to aggravate the
canker of memory to a virulent can
Ger, which destroys happiness.
Not the American Way
A young girl in Naples eloped with
her lover, who deserted her without
llegalizing the tie that bound them
She had returned to her home and
was forgiven and received by her