The Washington herald., 1918-05-24
Our Superior Children
By DOROTHY DIX,
THE WORLDS HIGHEST PAID WOMAN WRITER.

In the average life there are two
tragedies Of disappointment.
The first is the disappointment OF
matrimony when a man and woman
find out that marriage has not brought
them the happiness they expected but
they survive this blight to their hopes
because they have the consolation OF
their children. and they begin build
ing dreams Of bliss about them.
Il shall find.". say the lonely heart
ed man and woman TO themselves.
the comprehension, the sympathy.
the companionship in my children that
1 have missed in my marriage" and
that gives them the courage to live
through the dull monotony of uncon-
genial wedlock.
Then comes the second tragedy of
disappointment when the children
grow up and the parents find that
they have nothing in common with
their sons and daughters. and that in
place Of the companionship they
looked forward to they are confronted
by patronizing young people who lis
ten to them with forced politeness and
plainly regard them as old fossils,
with scarcely human intelligence.
And this second tragedy OF disap-
pointment is bitterer than the first
because 1t Is the end to. the hope OF
love. When ones children fail them
there are no more tender ties Of senti-
ment to which a man and woman can
look forward.
When you hear a hard-headed, hard
nsted old man call his college bred
son younI: fool, or see a woman look
furtively and constrainedly around to
see II her accomplished daughter is
IN ear shot before she ventures to ex-
press an opinion. you are glimpsing
this poignant human drama.
To the outside world it seems to
matter nothing that the boy whose
iather Is a partisan Republican, or a
oyed-ln-the-wool Democrat. has turned
SOCIALIST, or that the lad whose father
Is money making machine should
come nome from the university filled
with dreams of art for arts sake,
or that the son on whom a mans
Wnoie heart was set develops opinions
Wnlch are as antagonistic to his faith
ers as red rag is to a mad bull.
out 10 the father himself II is the
oVerthrowing Of the plans and hopes
OF lifetime. and 1t turns the labor
OF forty or fifty years into cinders.
ashes and dust.
This Is not what he has toiled for,
not What ne has striven for, and there
Is no crueller moment in a mans life
than when he realizes that he is more
IN sympathy with the freckle faced
bill clerk in the outer Office than he
Is with his own son.
Nor ran
depths of what a mother suffers
when the daughter in whose society
she mad expected to find consolation
ior all the sorrows of life, returns
70 her with ideas and ways that
are monstrous and shocking to her.
Mother Is q religious deyotee.
daughter Is rampantly agnostic.
mother adores Marie Corelli. Daugh-
Ter SCOTS at anything under Ibsen.
Mother Is rtgidly conservative.
Laughter Is Bohemian. Mother
dotes on society and has looked for
ward to revelling in the reflected
glory OF beautiful young daugh-
ter who Is q belle. Daughter refus-
es TO go to parties and insists on
following a career.
worse still. 1t may be that the
girl comes home to deride mothers
tastes, scorn her opinions, and ad-
vice. criticize her pronunciation.
ana institute a domestic reign of
terror under which mother trembles
before the critic on the hearth.
This is not what fathers and
mothers intended. or what they ex-
pected to happen when they made
every effort to give their boys and
girls the advantages that they new
er had in their own youth, Very
often 1t makes parents bitter. and
fthey say hard things about the in
gratitude Of children. But they
should be just enough to remember
that the situation is of their own
making. The uncultured woman
who has had her daughter educated
up to the high c pitch in art and
music has no right to complain II
the girl has outgrown the chromos
that adorn the walls Of her home.
ana the meiodian music Of her
childhood.
The man who sends his son to
Yale or Harvard and furnishes him
the money to live and dress as did
the sons OF the rich men with whom
he associated, has no right to de-
ride the boy for having formed
tastes and habits that seem extrav-
agant and sffete to his father.
No man would spend thousands
OF dollars on training q horse for
the race track and then expect It to
strike the sober. gait of a dray
horse. yet people educate children
out Of their class and then feel ef-
fronted because their sons and
daughters are what their education
has made them.
If you send boys and girls ava,
from homo at the most impression,
able age Of their lives, and Civ,
them over to the influence of strang
Iers for four or i've years you mus
sxpeet them to be what the strang