The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-11-15
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.
The Unforgivable SIM.
BY DOROTi

The Unforsivable SIM.
What is the one thing that a hus-
band finds it hardest to forgive in his
wife. and wife finds it hardest to
forgive in her. husband, and that hus-
bands and wives find it hardest to
forgive in each other?
You will say infidelity, cruelty,
drunkenness. Not at all. The big.
tragic sins carry with them a certain
romantic dignity that, in some way,
partially atones for them, and that at
least, leave us our self respect, while
we endure them.
We can make excuses for the lover
swept away by the tidal wave of a
sympathy for the man who reverts to
cave man tactics. We can still love
the beautiful soul Of the one whose
feet occasionally stumble into the gut
ter.
The things that we cannot forgive
are just the little daily irritations-
the sordid little meanneSses and weak
! pesses that fill us with contempt. and
make US despise the one who Is guilty
of them. They are the pebble in the
! shoe of matrimony that make 1t un-
| endurable to any save the saints and
| the martyrs.
In discussing this subject recently
a famous divorce lawyer said: Il
have found out that husbands and
wives will forgive each other the big
| sins, and that 1t is the little jars and
, frets that lead people into the divorce
courts. For instance, the one thing
that a woman never forgives man is
| iaziness.
"She will overlook his philandering,
and turn a blind eye on practically
every other fault, as long as he is a
| hustler who is always on the job, and
I shows that he can take care of himself
and look out for his own. But the
minute a man develops a tendency
to sit down and take life easily, and
! loaf and allow other men to pass him
| in the race, he commits the unpardon-
able sin SO far as his wife is con-
| cerned.
| "She can forgive him anything
easier than lack of energy, and he
| might commit any crime under the
than to be just plain no account. There
isn't a woman living who hasn't go
more respect for a successful burglar
than she has for a man who is a mode
of all the virtues who can't make {
living.
"Of course, you will say that there
are millions of women who do sticl
to lazy husbands whom they have t.
| support, but this is partly pride. part
ly a sense of duty, and the sporting
instinct that compels us to make the
best of a bad bargain, and mostly thu
Tappeal that such a weakling makes tt
1.-THE eternal maternal instinct in woman
But; her love never survives her dis
coyery that the man to whom she il
married Is too indolent to do a man.
part in the world. And when YOU
think of what a contemplate figur'
O man is who is so lazy that he let
a woman work and earn his bread ant
butter, for him you can't blame WON
en- for holding triflingness in men a
the unforgivable sin.
and my experience has taught m
that the thing that @ husband finds
hardest to forgive in a wife is ex
travaeance-the kind of extravaganc
that keeps mans nose always agains
the grindstone. and makes him turl
pale at the sight of a bill collector
So long as woman is a thrifty mana
ger. and keeps her expenditures withil
her husbands income, a man will pu
up with almost any feminine faults Il
his wife. but if she is a spendthrift n
matter what other good qualities sh
may have he begins to hate her an
to realize that he has made a fata
| mistake in marriage