The Washington herald., 1917-09-07
TOO MUCH FAMILY.
BY DOROTHY DIX.
The worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.

things and ruins where it tries to
help.
Big sister Is actuated by only the
purest of motives when she interferes
with everything little sister wants to
do. Martha .adores Mary and would
risk her life to guard her, and all that
her well-meant efforts amount to is
just shutting poor Mary of from her
opportunities In the world.
There are women who never marry
because they are celibates at heart
They stay single because they prefer
their liberty to any man. Domesticit,.
and children have no attractions for
them. and they find in spinsterhood
the condition Of life that most appeals
to them.
These are bachelor women in con-
tradistinction to old maids. The old
maid is the woman who wanted to
marry, and for some reason or other
has not married. To her, husband
and home and children are the only
words that spell happiness, and, lack
ing these. she is miserable no matter
what else she has. Her world is
bounded by a wedding ring, and If
she never gets this all the balance Is
cinders, ashes and dust.
This type Of woman has no impos-
sible ideal of husband. She doesn't
ask very much of a man except that
he shall be man. and when she does
not get married and live happily ever
afterward, she almost always can lay
the blame at the door of her med
ding family.
Sometimes she has had a mother
whose fierce maternal jealousy has
not been able to brook the thought of
her daughter loving some man better
than she does her mother and leaving
her mother to go away with him.
Such a mother will make every young
man who comes to the house so un-
welcome that he will not repeat his
visit.
She will hover around her daughter
so closely that no young man has n
chance to get acquainted with the
girl, much less to become sentimental
and II. in spite of too much mother,
the girl does get engaged. mother
never rests until she breaks the en-
gagement of. OF course, she will tell
you that she wants her girls to marry,
but she wants them to wait until they
are old enough and the right man
comes along, but she considers any-
thing under so too young for matri-
mony, and the right man would have
to be a combination Of perfections
that unfortunately does not exist in
this wicked world.
SO, unless the girl has the nerve 10
elope with some man she has met on
the sly, mothers hand shuts the door
to matrimony to her and forces her
out into the bleak waste OF spinster-
hood
Generally, however, It is the older
sisters who ruin little sisters chances
OF matrimony. and they do this even
although they are married themselves
and desire to see her well married.
But, 1t Is the unfortunate habit of
many families to constitute them
selves into an anvil chorus and sit
ready with their hammers to fall on
every beau little sister has and
knock him into the shape of a figure
of fun.
The young man may be a worthy
and estimable young man. but there
are none OF US in whom a lot of con-
scientious Investigators after flaws
cannot find defects, and when the
ordinary youth has run the gauntlet
OF family criticism, he hasn't a shred
of character left to him.
sister Annie has discovered that he
Is knock kneed. Sister Susie that he
combs his hair the wrong way.
Sister Ella that his clothes don't fit.
sister Hannah smells smoke on him.