The Washington herald., 1918-05-01
Double-Crossing Cupid
By DOROTHY DIX,
THE WORLDS HIGHEST PAID WOMAN WRITER.

I have q letter from a girl who
says:
How far have mothers a right tc
interfere In their daughters love af'
fairs? 1 am engaged TO a young mar
who has every good quality except
money. He Is sober. moral and In
dustrious, but my mother. alb.
solutely refuses her consent to oul
marriage, and says that il do marry
this man that she will never forgive
me or have any thing to do with me
again.
DO you think that may mother Ii
wrong in her attitude? II ! am not
afraid OF poverty and hard work. why
should she be for me? After all, II
is l who will have to live with the
man I marry, not my mother. and
it seems to me that 1t is more i'm
portant that I should be pleased IA
the matter than she"
OF course the girl is right In this
Husbands and wives are as purely a
matter OF taste as whether you like
onions with your beefsteak or not
and those who have to endure a daily
diet of them for thirty or forty years
should certainly have the consolation
of picking out their own particular
flavor.
Each Of us has the inalienabls
right to make our own matrimonial
mistake, and if there could be some
dispassionate and unprejudiced com
mission appointed to inquire into
when parents are right, and wher
wrong, in opposing their daughters
choice of a husband. a great deaI
OF trouble could be avoided.
Undoubtedly there are times-as In
a case when a man is known to bt
drunken or immoral, or even plair
no-account-when a father and moth
er are Just as much bound to try tc
keep their daughter from marrying
the man she is in love with as they
would be to prevent her committing
suicide II she had a tendency that
way. There are hundreds of other
cases, however, when the opposition
to a young man Is merely based on
difference of religious views, family
pride. or lack OF money. that are
utterly unjustified.
The chief source of opposition ia
most marriages where the course OF
young love fails to run smooth, Is
poverty. II TIC
who Is oftenest persona non grata
with his sweetheart's family, for
father and mother have the trick OF
turning a blind eye on the shortcom-
ings OF a youth with well-lined pock-
cts. and considering that a man being
able to give his wife an automobile
and an establishment will cover a
multitude of wild oats, or bridge over
a disparity of thirty years in age.
OF course one may say that the
parental dictum in matters Of the
heart amounts to little. and that in
these times no ono can keep a girl
from marrying the man she wants
to, or make her marry the one she
doesn't want to marry. Parents can't
lock a girl up in a turret chamber
nowadays, and feed her on bread and
water until she is willing to espouse
the husband of their choice.
That is true. but there are moral
thumbscrews that are Just as agon-
izingly effective as physical ones ever
were, and nobody but girls them
selves know how often they are ap-
piled.
Take. for instance, the case of a
girl who belongs to a good family
that is poor, a family that has seen
better days." and that writhes un-
der its present estate and that de-
pends upon the daughter to pull il
back into prosperity. Such girls
people have made cruel sacrifices to
educate her She knows all the pinch
ing economies that her every year at
school has cost.
She recalls how often her mother s
old black dress has been made over in
order that she may have fresh new