The Washington herald., 1917-10-29
PLAYTIME
BY DOROTHY DIX.
The Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer

Probably there is no other one sub
ject over which there is more acrim=
onious debate in tie family circle
than there Is over the amusement
question.
The average woman wants to doll
herself up in her best evening clothes
and go about to dinners, parties. the
aters and restaurants at night. The
average man wants to put on his slip
pers and dressing gown and stay at
home.
The average woman, when she tells
you of the fly in the ointment of her
happy married life. and points to the
one defect in her good, kind, loving
husband, complains that she has 10
stick at home evenings, that her hus-
band hardly ever takes her out any
where and that when he does he goes
with sucn groaning and disappearing
and wears so much the look Of an
Early Christian Martyr that 1t takes
all of the pleasure away.
And wnen the average woman
speaks with unconcealed envy OF an
other woman's husband. she invartl-
bly, relates the number of times a
week he takes his wife out to dine at
restaurants, and that they both take
dancing lessons and never miss a first
night at the theater.
The average man doesn't say much,
but probably his ideal of a perfect
wife is a woman who has lost both
legs in a railroad accident so she Is
content to stay put in her own home.
1t is not without significance that men
novelists invariably depict their per-
feet female characters as hreside
angels.
The thing that furnishes zip and pep
TO this domestic spat about playtimS
Is that both husband and wife can
make out a perfectly good case in
their own behalf, and that each OF
them is perfectly right from his or her
own point Of view.
The man says that when he comes
horne at night, exhausted from his
, days labor. 1t Is as much cruelty to
dumb brutes to expect him to put on
mis- soup-and-fishes and fare forth to
dance as 1t would be to make an old
plough horse run races at night.
He says that when the days work
Is over he is tired in every fiber OF
his brain and body, so tired that II
Is torture to him to have to think or
talk, that ne does not feel able even
to make the effort of being entertain
ing and araiable to strangers, and the
| very thought of having to grin and
smlrk and pretend to be interested in
the drivel Of the bores who constitute
the rank and file of society Is enough
TO send him gibbering to madhouse'
Furthermore, he AYERS, the LITTLE
narrow margin of the evening!
quiet rest at home Is all that stand.
between him and a nervous break
, down. Deprive him of that, SEM
him out at night into noisy crowds
deprive him Of three or four hours
of sleep; upset his stomach w'tl
unwholesome eating and drinking
and he would break under the bur
dens he bears. No man who burni
the candle at both ends. even If h,
, burns the candle in the company o.
his wife. can hold his own in bus
mess with the man who conserve.
his wick and gets every particl,
Of the light out of it that is in it
Heaven knows" says the man
II work like 1 do for the sake o.
my family. I give them every in
ludgence that I can possibly afford
lavish things with both hands OIL
my wife, and why on earth sh,
can't see this thing from a reason
! able standpoint and quit badgerins
me about running around at night