Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1917-11-19
WHICH HAS THE GREATER
INFLUENCE?
Ry DOROTHY DIX

BY DOROTHY DIX
- HERE is a superstition current
that a maiden's character is as
y plastic as a lump of dough, and
that if man marries young girl he
can mould her into any kind of a wife
that suits his fancy.
Innumerable men have fallen VIC
tins of this superstition. They have
married silly little girly.girlies who
looked as soft as mush, only to find
that under their pliable exteriors there
was a sub-surface of fool prejddices
and fixed ideas as hard as granite, and
that they could change the Rock of
Gibraltar just as easily as they could
alter their wives habits or modes OF
thought. =
Heredity, environment and mother
had already been on the job for some
twenty years or more and placed their
stamp upon the girl too deeply for the
hand OF any mere husband to erase il.
Nevertheless, in spite OF all this,
matrimony is the factory in which
character is really made, and while
blood and breeding and upbringing lay
the foundations for it, and parents and
kindred and early associations help to
form it, it is the hand of husband and
wife who put the finishing touches up.
on 1t. They are the master. craftsman
who iIiscribe upon it, at the last, their
own personality. -. -. H..
1t is true that no man can marry a
girl with any certainty that he can de-
velop her into being the wife of his
dreams. Nor can any woman cut over
a man according to her little perforat-
ed paper pattern of an ideal husband.
But no man and woman can live to-
gether in the intimacy of married life
without being changed by each other,
and in the end they are pretty much
what each has, consciously or uncon-
sciously, made the other.
4 No one can tell how this influence
will work, Sometimes it works for
evil, what is fine and noble in husband
or wife growing commoner to mix with
the clay of his or her mate. Just as
often it brings a reyulsion, and what
Is highest and best in a man or wo-
mans nature is called out by the
meanness and sordidness in the
character of the one to whom he or
she is married.
You will often notice the almost |
Godlike patience with which a man |
will deal with the weakness and pet
tiness of a silly, vain, shallow wife. |
Unknowingly she has made him what /
he is. Her lack of every fine quality |
has called out the fineness in him.
Or you will see a woman bearing !
with and forgfving man who is cad
and brute. He has made her the al
most angelic creature she is, able to |
suffer and be strong enough to look
beyond the personal, and sacrifice her
self for the good Of her children and !
society. /
And of course there is the reverse
of this where the mean woman makes
her husband mean and where the un-.i
husband breaks down his
wife's principles.
Who has not seen a generous, open
hearted man, full of kindly thoughts
toward all the world, gradually grow
stingy and narrow and suspicious after
a few years marriage to a parsimont-
Gus and bitter woman? /
Who has not seen a girl of noble
and altruStic ideals grow purse proud
and sordid and full of shifty expedi-
ents after marrying a man whose God
was the mone& God?
Certainly tie brightest saints and /
the blacklist devils on this earth are
home made, for no other influence on
our lives is comparable in importance
with that Of our husbands and wives.
It is something we can never escape
for day or an hour. 1t is always with
us. 1t is like the dropping of the wa
ter that wears the hardest granite.
As to which has the greater influ-
ence over the other. husband or wife,
that depends upon which of the couple
has the stronger will and the more /
determination to rule the roost. Also
1t is generally the one who is of the
more ignohle nature.
Nothing OH earth is more pathetic.