The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-05-05

| The way of a man with a maid has
ever been held to be one of the inscrut-
able mysteries of life, but there Is a
stranger thing still, and that is the
way widowers marry.
I To the innocent bystander 1t looks
! only too often as If a man, otherwise
| sane. took leave of his senses when
he came to make a second marriage.
1t is common spectacle to see stalo'
fat, middle aged widower with mousse
| full Of children, marrying furry
headed little girl no older than his own
daughters, or a polished society man,
whose first wife had belonged to his
own class, taking his cook or his
housekeeper for his second wife.
| Indeed, so little marrying sense do
widowers as a class, display that they
have become a sort of consolation
prize to women, who comfort them
selves with the fact that if they can't
be No. wife there is no dlfflcuity IN
becoming a No. 2. For they don't
need any bait-neither looks nor
| charm nor intelligence-withw which to
angle for a widower. All they need
| is Just to be ally-on-the-Spot, and
| he'll come up and flop into their nets.
Nobody has ever explained the
strange psychic phenomenon of why
a man will marry for his second wife a
woman he wouldn't have looked at for
his first, nor why a sensible, practical
/ y
fifty years of experience in life, should,
in venturing into the holy estate a
second time, throw all prudence and
caution to the winds and contract an
alliance that seemingly any idiot would
know was inevitably bound to end in
| disaster.
Yet we have all seen widowers who
were men of culture and refinement
| marrying coarse and illiterate women
with whom they had not one thought
NY-i ia I'M nd "a
| the misery that resulted. And we've
seen widowers bring silly, undisciplin-
ed, unwise young stepmotherS to rule
over turbulent children who were
nearer her age than she was to her
| husbands, and we've looked on in
pity at the fight that followed.
And we've wondered what made
these widowers marry as they did. We
| have wondered how a man whose girls
were the gently bred daughters of a
lady could put over them to rear them
a woman who had none of the quail
| ties of their own mother, a woman
who could teach them none of the
elegancies and graces that their own
mother would have taught them; a
woman who was incapable of making
or holding for them the place in So
ciety that their own mother would
| have done.
| And we have wondered how any
man could have been deluded enough
|
would have the tact. the self control.
the far-reaching intelligence to enable
! her to fill the most difficult of all
roles, that of step-mother. We have
wondered how any man could have
been so blind as not to foresee that
! bringing such a one into his house was
| like bringing in fire brand, and that
the result would inevitably be a home
that was always in a row and a tur-
moil, and that the end was bound to
Ii LII i .
ed from him, and driven from him,
and his own heart torn in two between
his love and duty to the two factions.
We have wondered at these things
and now an archbishop of the middle
west has explained them. He says
| that the widowers who make these
unsuitable marriages for the most part
are men who have become panic
stricken upon the deaths of their
wives, and who re-marry as soon as
possible merely that their children
may be cared for. Furthermore, mar
rying in haste, they marry without
judgment the first woman that is
handy.
In his long experience in dealing
with foolish and weak humanity, the
archbishop = has seen thousands Of
these marriages that have turned out
so unhappily that he is now establish
ing a home where motherless boys
may be taken care of, and their faith
ers thus prevented from being driven
into precipitate and undesirable mar
| riageS.
No doubt the archbishop is right
A woman whose husband dies leaving
| her with a house full of little chill
dren, has always been a tear-compeIl-
ing object of sympathy, but in reality
she is not half SO pathetic or so for
lorn and helpless as the man whose
wife dies, leaving him with a lot of
children to care for.
If the woman has money, she suf-
ferS nothing but her bereavement. She
can keep her children together. She
has no anxiety about their upbring-
ing, about their being kept clean ply
sically and spiritually. She has the
consolation of her comfortable, we'll
ordered home.
She does not need to marry again in
order to have somebody to look after
her children.
But the widower with children is in
a desperate plight unless he happens
to have a mother or sister who can
step into the breach. He does not
know what to do for children when
they are sick or when they are we'll
He doesn't even know what clothes
they ought to have. He must be at
his business all day and cannot watch
them. He knows that they are run
ming the streets learning the things
they should not know. He can only
turn them over to hirelings, and there
is no wonder that he grows desperate
and thinks that any woman to take a
mothers place over his brood is bet
! ter than no one.
And if he marries a woman inferior
| to his first wife, that is no wonder
either, because the job of step-mother
is not an alluring one, nor one that
appeals to woman attractive enough
| to be desirable to other men,
| i know a cultivated and attractive
young widower with three little girls.
| who declared that a widower with
children is a pariah that no woman
! of his own class will look at 1t takes
! a woman with the spirit of a martyr
1 to want to undertake a ready-made
family.
And there you are. That explains
why widowers marry foolishly. They
] ma rT-xv