Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1917-12-17
A sIDELIGHT ON DIVORCE.
10y DOROTHY DIX,
The Worlds Highest Paid Woman
WrlterD

AlOST intelligent people have come
T TO see that divorce is not an un-
mixed evil, but a necessary evil.
II Is often the surgeons knife that
cuts away the cankering sore in If
in order to save 1t, but just as surg
cry is not always an infalIihle cure for
diseases, so divorce Is not never
failing remedy for domestic misery.
Sometimes divorce means jumping
out Of the frying pan into the fire, as
the hOmely Old phrase goes. and
man and woman who have been mis-
cradle together in matrimOny find
themselves still more wretched after
they had parted.
After all, perhaps one gets attached
TO ones 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 divorce
actions and who find out in the ma
jority OF cases that their DEGREES alb
solute are boomerangs that annihilate
them and that even a very indifferent
husband may be better than no hus-
band at all.
Without doubt men have the same
experience, for there 8 no denying
that with all its faults, its drawbacks,
even its martyrdom, matrimony does
unfit people for the celibate life, and
the man who has grown accustomed
TO the comforts and discomforts of a
home finds himself like a fish out of
water when he is cast forth upon the
cold comfort of boarding houses, ho-
tells or. clubs.
He may have rebelled against hav,
ing to punch the domestic time clock;
he may have writhed under the tyran.
ny OF wife who Kept tab on his going
ont and coming in, and who told him
what he should eat and what he
should wear, and what he shouldn't
bmoke or drink; he may have be-
grudged the money that went to pay
for shoes and groceries, and milk for
the baby, instead of for pleasure; his
eyes may have wearied at the sight
Of a fat old wife and turned longingly
towards sylph-like chickens, but that
a. 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 matri-
n1ony has dore its deadly work He is
q tanned and domesticated creature
who has learned to eat out OF wife'e
hand, and he is lost without it.
There is no thrill in staying out at
night when nobody cares whether
you stay or not. Whats the, use OF
making money when man has no
one OF his own TO spend 1t on? Better |
even is the nagging of an honest,
faithful, Fat old wife than the joIlying |
OF the painted lips Of the sirens who |
work man for all he is worth and |
from whom he soon turns in disgust |
Thus II happens that thousands OF |
married couples who thought they |
could not live with each other fhd
that they cannot live without each
other, and 1t is q pity that there is
not some half way station In the di-
yorce proceedings where the law !
could offer a husband and wife a |
chance to take back all the charges
they have made against each other, |
and kiss and make It up.
The thing that is the matter with |
matrimony after all is monotony. We
try to run 1t as continuous perform |
.ance, with never let up or break
In It with the same face across the |
table at every meal. listening to the |
same line of conversation three hun.
ered and sixty days year, rasped by |
the same faults, weaknesses, peculiar
files, habits, and 1t gets upon our |
nerves. It's eating the thirty Quails In |
thirty days that no appetite can stom. |
ach.
No wonder marriage is failure. So |
would anything else be II wo get too
much of 1t. We loathe music, litera-
ture and art when we get an over.
dose OF them. People with barrels of |
money get no enjoyment out of spend |
ing 1t. Nothing bores like a perpe- |
tual round of pleasure. We pray for
rain after a long succession of sun
shiny days. And IL people could only |