The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-10-25
DOROTEY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DRX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.
Chasing Egoes.


queney of divorces" said the Woman
Philosopher, It when you sit down
calmly and contemplate the miracle
that has to be wrought in human ma
ture before any two people can ad
just themselves to each other so that
they can live together in comparative
harmony, the wonder is that any mar
riage is a success and that divorce
isn't universal
THE reason why nearly all mar
riages are the marriages of the young
is because it is only the young and
ignorant who have foolhardy courage
to believe that man and woman with
different strains of blood in their
veins, who have been brought up in
a different environment, who have
been bred to different habits, customs,
and ways of looking at things who
have different tastes and different
standards, can have a magic formula
pronounced by a preacher over them
in a church and be really made one
and go home and live in peace ever
after.
Those of us who are older know
better, and that's why very few people
over. 40 years old have tie courage to
try the matrimonial experiment. We
know that it is as hard for the leopard
to change his spots as it is for us to
get away from our family ideals or
alter the custom that we have fol-
lowed all our lives. OF course most
of us do manage t. achieve the trans
formation to some extent, at least, but
no one can deny that it is an unpleas-
ant process, full of pickering, misun-
derstandings and hurt feelings on
both sides.
Particularly on the brides part
Most women salt down the first two
or three years of their marriage in
brine and never think of them without
a gulp in their Threats.
For you see that attraction of OPP
posites that draws a man and a wom-
an together in the first place and
makes them want to marry each 9TH
er, works the opposite way as soon
as they are married and makes them
antag onize each other at every turn.
1.-The cold, hard, stern man. for
instance, has a fatal fascination for
the warm hearted, loving woman to
whom affection is the very breath of
life She marries him, and dies of
starvation for the tenderness it is not
in his nature to give. Or the culti-
waited scholarly man is irresistibly
drawn to the little doll baby girl who
has nothing on her mind except the
latest thing in hats. He marries her
and spends the balance of his life on
a mental desert island perishing for
intellectual compaaionship.
COR the girl who is nothing but an
animated fashion plate, and who
cares for nothing but the gaiety of
! restaurants, theaters and parties,
marries a man whose heart and soul
and life are bound up in some uplift
work. Or the man whose dream of
domestic bliss is a suburban home
with a perambulator on the front
porch and a hot dinner awaiting the
GAS, deliberately picks out a pro-
fessiOnal woman for a wife who is
more unalterably welded to her own
latch key and pocket book than she
ever will be to any man. ana to
whom all babies are brats.
"O1d Dame Nature, who is the most
constituencies matchmaker on earth,
and whose activities are carried on
for the good of the race and not
the happiness of the individuals con-
cerned, precipitates luckless couples
into such incongruous marriages ev-
cry day. You would say every one
of them was bound to end in divorce
But they don't. Somehow they rub
along though the attrition gives them
the worn and weary aspect that
makes married people generally look
bachelor friends male and female
And even when there is no great
/ insurmountable obstacle, like a differ
| ence in brain or moral outlook, be-
tween a husband and wife, there are
I thousands of little differences that
have to be smoothed out and that
make the first few years of married
life a hard road to travel. Now, in
4 my own case, l married one of the
( dearest, most Iowa BILE, most generous
men the good God ever made. but the
5 first ten years of ouI married life
4 was full of friction between US and
with his family, because he and I had
been reared in such different rome
atmospheres and had such different
/ points of view.
My people were prim and puri-
+ tanic, with rigid codes of conduct
Each individual child of US had its
/ own room. its own belongings, its own
\ privacy, and we would no more have
] thought of using each others things
/ or intruding on each other than we
would have intruded on stranger.
/ We were taught reticence about our
/ own affairs, and that to talk about
! our plans was to. indulge in a sort of
weak garrulity.
My husband, on the contra r.,
came of a happy-go-lucky family.
! demonstratively affectionate to each
/ other, and where everything was held
almost in common, and nobody had
/ or wanted to have, any privacy. E,v-
! erythfng that everybody did was talk
ed over exclusively before and after
| it was done. and was the subject OF
/ unlimited free advice.
You cannot imagine how all of
/ this grated on my every sensibility. 1t
! seemed to me the very quintes-eEce of
( the vulgarity of family life. I almost
edied of silent fury the first time my
/ husband asked me whom a letter was
from that I was reading, and it was
! months before 1 had sense enough
| to- perceive that what prompted his
! quesdon was not jealous desire to
/ pry into my correspondence, but just
a loving interest that made anything
| that concerned me even my letters,
1 of interest to him
/ 1t shocked me TO hear him tell of
! his aspirations. 1 thought it weak
| Dragging, until in course OF time I
learned that it was just his affection