The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-12-04
DOROTHY DIX TALIS
By DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.
A sIdeIight on Divorce.


evil, but a necessary evil. 1t is often
the surgeons knife that cuts away the
cankering sore in a life in order to
save it. but just as surgery is not al
ways an infallible cure for diseases.
so divorces is not never falling rem
edy for domestic misery.
Sometimes divorce means jumping
out of the frying pan into the fire, as
the homely old phrase goes, and a
man and women who have been mis-
cradle t-gether in matrimony find
themselves still more wretched after
they are parted.
After all, perhaps one gets attached
| to one S sparring partner and feels lost
when deprived of the enemy with
| whom one has fought for years.
This is particularly the case with
women, who are the complainants in
more than three-fourths of the di-
vorce actions a. who find out in the
majority of cases that their DEGREES
/ absolute are boomcrangs that ami
! IIilate them and that even a very in
different husband may be better than
no husband at all.
/ Without doubt moI have the same
! experience, for there is 70 denying
| that with all it's faults, its drawbacks,
! even its martyrdom, matrimony does
unfit people for the >libate life, and
| the man who has grown accustomed
| to the comforts and discomforts of a
IL
water when he is cast forth upon the
| cold comfort of boarding houses.
| hotels or clubs.
| He may have rebelled against hav-
ing to punch the domestic time clock;
he may have writhed under the
| tyranny of a wife who kept tab on
| his going out and coming in, and who
| told him what he SHOULD eat and what
Re sh uld wear, and what he shouldn't
smoke or drink; he may have be-
| he hot 20
for shoes and groceries, and milk for
the baby, instead of for pleasure; his
| eyes may have wearied of the sight
| of a fat old wife and turned longingly
towards sylphlike chickens, but that
is while he is still bound hand and
foot in the holy estate.
Let the law strike his shackles
| from him and he soon finds that mat
| rimony has done its deadly work He
is a tanned and domesticated creature
who has learned to eat out of a Wife's
hand and he is lost without it.
| There is no thrill in staying out at
/ night when nobody cares whether you
stay or not. What's the use of max
ing money when man has no one
| of his own to spend it on? Better even
is the nagging of an honest, faithful,
| fat old wife than the jollying of the
painted lips of the sirens who work
| a man for all he is worth and from
whom he soon turns in disgust.
| , Thus it happens that thousands of
married couples who thought they
! could not live with each other, find
| that they cannot live without each
| other, and it is a pity that there is
not some halfway station in the di-
vorce proceedings where the law
| could offer a husband and wife
chance to take back all the charges
they have made against each other,
| and kiss and make it up.
The thing that's the matter with
ri inn al oil to
try to run it as a continuous per-
Torrance, with never a let up or
| break in it, with the same face across
| the table at every meal, listening to
the same line of conversation three
| hundred and sixty days a year, rasped
by the same faults, weaknesses pc
culiarities and habits,Nand it gets upon
our nerves. It's eating the thirty
quails in thirty days that no appetite
| can stomach.
So would anything else be if we got
too much of it. We loathe music,
| literature and art when we get an
| overdose of them. People with bar
of spending it. Nothing bores like a
perpetual round of pleasure. We
pray for rain after a long succession
of sunshiny days. And if people
could only be married half of the
time instead of all of it, or if every
husband and wife had enough intelli-
/ gence to go off by themselves for a
long vacation and give separation a
chance to do its healing work, there
would be very few divorces
| When we are very close to people
their faults rub US raw But when
we get away from them we get a
clearer perspective and we see that
we made mountains out of molehills.
and that If another did wrong, we
showed neither tact. nor patience nor
wisdom in the way in which we dealt
with q difficult situation
The other day I met an unhappy
woman who said to me:
Two years ago 1 divorced my hus-
band because of an affair he had
with another woman. was mad with
jealousy and 1 felt that I could never
forgive him; I hated him, and all 1
wanted to do was to take my children
and get as far from him as possible
I thought that divorce would some
how be cure for the agony that was
eating my heart out and that once 1
was free from my husband 1 would
be happy.
But 1 have been utterly miserable.
Except for this one big sin against
me-. my husband was all that any
woman could ask. He was good ind
kind and generous to me and the chill
dren. We had pretty home. a set
tied place in society. and 1 could de-
vote myself, to taking care of my
children.
MY divorce changed all of that /
have no home. 1 have had to go to
work to help support my children and
they lack many things they need that
their father would have given them.
| People pity me as a divorcee and ]
can see that even my family and my
friends who urged me on to get a
divorce and not to stand being f1out-
ed by my husband, consider me bur-
den on them.
Believe me, if / were confronted
with the same problem today there
would be divorce for me. 1 would
stick by my home and my place in
society and I'd shut my eyes to my
husbands philandering until he got
} tired and came back home repentant.