Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-03-21
SHE ASKED TOO
MUCH OF HUSBAND
This Woman Never Married
Because She Was Looking
For a Paragon
BY Dorothy Dix

"The reason never married" said
the seventh woman, was because l
demanded too much in a husband.
81 was. looking for a paragon, and
as the countryman said when he saw
hippopotamus for the first time,
there amt no sich animal
GAS look back now on my artless
girlish ideal. with the light of many
years experience OF human nature
and much knowledge of the world to
! illuminate my vision, don't know
whether to laugh or to cry, for my
purpose was so high and my practise
so foolish, and in reaching out after
an impossible idol, missed all of the
nice consolation prizes that l might
have had.
Il had many chances to marry
good chances, too, and to marry men
to whom for one reason or another
was greatly attracted, and with whom
| could have fallen in love if l had
permitted myself. But no. In my
youthful egotism l had decided that
l would marry no man who did not
measure up to the standard of per-
fection that 1 had erected, and of
course no meer mortal man did.
He couldn't, for any specifications
of the kind of husband that l
Thought good enough for me required
a composite of the salient characters
ties of~Paul Swan, Sir Gallahad, Mr..
Rockefeller, Keats and John Drew.
Hard Requirements
"'The man that l married must be
handsome, tall, with piercing eyes
and dark mustache. He must have
unblemished morals, and yet be a
man of the world who knew his way
about.
He must be able to make money,
and plenty of it, because l hankered
after the fieshpots, but he must also
be of soulful nature and able to
quote poetry effectively, and to un-
derstand my soul aspirations, and he
must have all of the social graces,
and wear his clothes like the god
like young creature in the tailors
advertisements.
THAT was the kind of a husband
that was looking for, and poor little
the feast of life is served a la carte,
and that we don't get all of the good
les. We have to make our choice
from the menu that fate serves us,
and the best We can do is pick out
the one thing that We relish most.
Later on, l discovered that mas
euline pulehritude and brains seldom
go together; that a giant may have
the soul of a pigmy, and the heart
and mind of five-foot-four man may
be so big they crowd his small body;
that man who occasionally ZigZags
off of the straight and narrow path
often makes the tenderest and most
adorable of husbands, while q model
of all the virtues generally is a grind
ing tyrant at home: that money max
ing and yearning after the whatness
of the what are as incompatible as
oil and water.
THAT husband who is a Beau
Brummel in his dress spends the
clothes allowance of the family on
himself instead of his wife, and fin
ally, and above all, that romantic
love is as evanescent as the dew on
the rose, and that any kind of plain
old prosaic love is better than no
love at all.
A Little Too Late
But like most discoveries that we
make for ourselves, my discovery
came too late to do me any good. |
had let my youth and my opportuni-
ties to marry all pass by me while
was seeking for the impossible HE.
There was Jack, who was as hand
some as a young Apollo, but
wouldn't marry him because he was
as vain as a peacock, and had moth
ing but his good looks to recommend
him. There was a clergyman who
proposed to me, an ascetic, saint like
young fellow, giving himself in pas
sion of devotion to work in the slums,
but | couldn't see myself preachers
wife, living in smelly tenements, and
doing mission work instead of going
to teas and balls.
"And Tom, who was born with the
Midas touch that turned everything
to gold asked me to share his for
tune. But Tom hadn't an interest in
the world except business, and the
prospect of spending all of my even
ings talking to a man who thought
that Browning was a new Industrial
stock, and that the only book with a
genuine heart thrill in it was bank
book, didn't appeal to me, so l turned
that proposition down.
ION the other hand, there was
Alphonse, who was a quivering bunch
of artistic and literary. sensibilities,
who palpitated to every shade of
meaning in books, or pictures, or
music, but who could never make a
| living, and whose wife was due to
take in boarders and support him.
"And there was Philip, whose ul-
| innate ambition was achieved when
he introduced a new figure into a
cotillion, or was the first to wear a
mauTe ribbon on his eyeglasses that
exactly matched his silk waistcoat
and socks. Somehow 1 couldn't see
myself as the wife of as pifling a
thing as that, either
! Now, each one of these men had
one of the qualities 1 desired in a
husband, but none had them all, and
so in my ignorance and inexperience
I kept a watchful waiting for the one
to come along who combined all of
the virtues in one. But he never
did, and that's why am an old maid.
"If l had to do it over again, with
my present experience and knowledge
of life, I should simply choose the
man who had the virtue l liked best.
l wouldn't consider a mans looks or
size IL liked the quality OF his heart
and brains