Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-02-14
WIFE CAN'T DO
LIKE HUSBAND
What's Sauce For Gander Isn't
Always Sauce For the
Goose
BY Dorothy Dix


alone. He diverts himself in going
to theatres and dances and cafes with
other women and men, and his wife
wants to know IL she has not the
right to follow his example, and
amuse herself also.
or course she's got the right, but
she hasn't got the liberty, and If
she tries following in her husbands S
footsteps she will find that they lead
her, by short cut, to the doors of
the divorce court.
What is sauce for the matrimonial
goose isn't sauce for the matrimonial
gander, and there are very few men
who will stand for the line of con-
duct in their wives that they expect
their wives to put up with from them.
A man, for instance. resents it as
unwarranted nagging for his wife to
ask him where he has been when he
| comes home at G. NJ, but any
woman who stayed out until that
hour and refused to furnish a per-
fectly credible alibi would have
chance to tell her troubles to q po-
liceman. She'd find the door locked
and barred against her, so that she
would never get in to make her ex
plantations at ALL
There are thousands of men who
rarely spend an evening at their own
! fireside and who are perfectly happy
and satisfied playing poker at their
club, or drinking in a saloon, as long
as they know that their wives are
sitting up bored and forlorn alone
at home; but let the woman either
invite company in to relieve the mon
otony of her life or put on her hat
and go forth in search of pleasure,
and the mischief's to pay.
An Injustice
OF course, this is bitterly unjust.
If a man won't stay at home and
try to entertain his wife, he should
not object to her finding someone
else who will, but as Mr.. Cleveland
remarked concerning another mat
ter, it's a condition and not a theory
that confrontS us, and the plain
truth of the matter is that no mar
ried woman dareS treat her husband
as he treats her. There's one rule
for the wife and another for the
husband, unless marriage is to end
in Il grand explosion.
Suppose a woman criticizes her
husbands faults and weaknesses as
freely as he criticizes hers. Sup
pose, when Mr.. Jones made a bad
bargain in business or got gorge
ously gold-bricked in a trade, that
Mrs. Jones not only at the time told
him how many kinds of an idiot he
was, but embellished the incident
with a few humorous touches and
kept it to tell as her favorite dinner
story. What would Mr.. Jones do
and say to Mrs. Jones for exhibiting
him as a fool before company?
We pause for a reply. Yet all of
us know dozens of men whose main
funny story is some mistake that
their wives have made, and which
they never fail to tell, though the
telling brings tears of modification
to their wives eyes.
When things have gone wrong at
the store, Mr.. Smith bangs into the
house and slams the door behind him,
and appears with face so glum that
the children hush their prattle and
the cat gets under the couch, and
the wife scuttles to the kitchen TO
hurry up dinner. He storms and
RACES and grouches whenever he feels
like it, and Mrs. Smith spends her
time trying to soothe him down ana
cheer him up and win all out of his
black humor.
But suppose Mrs. Smith tore up
the earth every time anything went
amiss in the kitchen; suppose when
her husband came home from work
he found her glooming around, and
she only grumbled when he spoke
to her-would husband offer himself
as a lightning rod to carry off her
bad temper? Not much! He'd put
on his hat and go out and find some
place with serener atmosphere.
A Mans Possibilities
And-whisper it low. sisters-why
shouldn't man take as much trouble
to keep himself young and slim and
straightforward and well-dressed and
attractive to retain his wife's love,
as a woman does to keep her hus-
band interested in herr Every
woman is deathly afraid of getting
fat and triple-chinned lest she be less
alluring to her husband at forty-five
than she was at twenty. But do you
ever hear of middle aged man, who
is getting bald-headed and bay-win-
dowed, worrying for fear that his
wife will find him less attractive at
fifty than he was at twenty-five?
1t doesn't even occur to a man
that his wife could quit loving him
or get tired of him, but he expects
her to keep hustling to keep him
perpetually fascinated.
Suppose also a woman should treat
her husband when he is sick as he
treats her. When Mr.. Brown comes
home and finds Mrs. Brown sick, he
is anxious for her to have a doctor
and a nurse, and quarts of medicine
If she needs it. Having duly pro-
vided these, he tiptoes over to the
bed and says how sorry he is that his
dear Maria is suffering, but he's no
good in a sick room, and so he fares
forth to the theatre or some other
place of diversion where his mind will
be taken off of the thought of how
uncomfortable things are at home
with illness in the house.
But when Mr.. Brown is sick, If
dear Maria isn't on the job every
minute of the time, If she isn't hold
ing his hand and looking scared, and
shedding sympathetic tears, why, he
considers himself the most ill-used
man on earth, and should she go
e. = II.