The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-07-19
Dorothy D6G Says
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer
How to Keep Love.


.'Why is love the most perishable
commodity in the world? Why do
husbands and wives so soon fall out of
love with each other?
when the average couple get mar
ried they are almost idiotically senti-
mental. yet in few years-often in
a few months-they seem to cease to
care for each other. They are bored.
Indifferent, antagonistic, fighting like
Kilkenney cats instead of billing and
cooling like turtle doves as they did
on the hinder side of the altar. Yet.
SO far as the outsider can see, there
is no reason for the change in the
temperature of their affection. Both
husband and wife are just what they
were before marriage SO far as per-
sonal charm goes; both are good, re-
spectacle people anxious to do their
duty.
What has killed their affection SO
soon? And is there any known pre-
sentative in which romantic love may
be canned so that it will keep fresh
and sweet after the honeymoon"
Certainly, dear correspondent, there
is a way to keep love. Put it up in
incense. That is guaranteed recipe
that never fails.
Would you keep the fires of affec-
Husband or wife? Feed the flames
continually with words of devotion
and adulation.
Would you have your own love last
as long as life itself? Be sure the
voice that murmurs words of praise
and affection in your ears will thrill
you as long as you have sense to hear.
The trouble with most men and
women, when they realize that they
have won another's heart and have
been married for love, is that they are
like a foolish youth who has come
into nr~fI1
wealth of affection that has been be-
slowed upon them is inexhauStlble,
and they draw upon it and draw upon
it, and waste it with a prodigal hand
until by and by they suddenly discover
that it is all used up and gone, and
there is no more love left.
1t has not occurred to them in the
days of plenty to hoard their treasure,
much less to add to it. Yet it Is no
more necessary to lay up some money
for the proverbial rainy day OF ones
finances than it is to lay up love
against the rainy day of ones physical
and mental needs-the days when
ones youth has waned, and ones
charm is lost, and one grows duh ana
tedious in conversation.
Never was there more mlSchleV-
Gus idea than that we all start out in
matrimony with fixed capital of love
that cannot be Subtracted from or in
creased. In nothing can you SO easily
! go broke as in affection, and no stock
can be more readily inflated than
Heart Preferred. In reality it rests
with each of US whether we bull or
bear our own particular love market,
and whether we become millionaires
or bankrupts in affection.
Cupid does business largely on
credit, and it is no trick at all for him
to borrow enough romantic capital to
start young couple out in an en-
gagement. 1t is only after marriage
that the question of how to make up
the deficit resulting from the wear
and tear of every day life and keep
the capital stock at par, becomes
vital matter.
The only way it can be done is by
! aiding continually to the visible sup
ply of love in the firm, and the mar
vel is that so few people do this.
No one expects a bridal trouseau to
supply one with clothes for a lifetime.
or a wedding breakfast to suffice for
food for thirty or forty years, but the
great mass of mankind never seem to
dream that the vows of devotion they
made during the days of courtship
are not enough to last to the end of
time but need constant daily renewal.
A man will tell a woman before he
| is married to her that she is the most
| beautiful fascinating, intelligent crea-
| ture on earth, and that he adores her
wildly, madly, frantically. And after
| he is married to her he never mem
| tions the subject of love again or ex-
| presses the slightest admiratio for
| anything she does.
| In reality he probably thinks just
| as well of his wife as he did of his
| sweetheart. Perhaps he admires her
more, for the sense of possession gem
orally throws a halo around the thing
| possessed and man is apt to- esteem
| his wife superior to other women just
| because she is his wife, as he thinks
| his gun, his dog, his automobile bet
| ter than those belonging to anybody
| else.
| every bit of the fineness of her, and
| be deeply grateful for the sacrifices
she makes for him, but he never
| bothers to tell her so.
J After while, if he is sensitive, he
begins to perceive that her love for
him has lost some of its freshness and
| bloom. Later he discovers that it is
| withered and faded and, maybe, dead,
| and he wonders at it, and rails at the
| falseness of women. But he never
realizes that the fault is his, and that
! he killed her beautiful affection by
| neglect. Love can no more live with
| out being fed on love and watered by
| constant assurance of admiration and
| appreciation, than a rose can bloom
| in an arid and rainless desert.
| Nor do women cherish the affection
they have won a whit more wisely
| than men do. When the average
woman returns from heF priuai tour
she lays aside the harp on which she
sung her husbands virtues before
marriage, and smashes the vessel in
which she burned incense at his feet
| She expects him to take her love on
faith, as he expects her to take his
Then before long she begins to cry out
| that love is dead, not realizing that
she has starved it to death herself.
| She may think her husband as ro-
mantle a hero as she did in the days
| of courtship; she may think every
time she looked at his bent shoulders
and anxious eyes that the man who
spends his life shaving over a desk
or behind a counter that his family
may live soft and easy, deserves to
have the iron cross pinned on his