Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-11-25
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Everybody Must Have a
Play Time
Copyright, 1920, by the Wheeler Syndi-
cate, Inc.


~ girl of twenty, and he wishes her
to marry him at once, but she puts
off the wedding and tells him that she is
having such good time that she wants to
play around little while longer.
This makes the man feel that the girl is
of frivolous character, and doubt whether
she will make him a desirable wife.
I sould take exactly the opposite view. My
opinion is that the girl is remarkably level
headed, and that she shows an amazing
amount Of common sense in having her lit
tie fling before she is married, instead of
waiting to do it afterwards, when there
would be ten times more trouble with jeal-
Gus husband than there is even with jeal-
Gus sweetheart.
Doubtless this young woman has been
shrewd enough to observe tow things the
first is that the only play time the average
woman ever has is ir the few years that lie
between her school days and her marriage
day. In that brief space of time only has
she any liberty or is she care-free. It is
the one picnic in her whole life, the one
green oasis in the arid desert of the years
that many woman ever knows
If a girl marries a poor man, her mar
riage brings her life sentence at hard labor,
and such pnching economies as wear the
very soul to tatters. If she marries a man
and hard, then she kisses happiness good
by at the altar and her life is one long
martyrdom.
Even when she makes fortunate mar
riage, when she marries a man who can
make a comfortable living, and who is ten
der, and kind to her, she still is done with
the light-hearted enjoyment of girlhood, be-
cause marriage brings responsibilities, and
burdens, and the wife who has a husband
to care for, and little children to look AFTER
must think of her duties before her pleas
ures
Our observing young friend has doubtless
taken note of these things, and that it Is
only girls who laugh much. Married women
smile.
The second thing that she has noted is
that if woman wants a man to take her
about to places of amusement, she'd better
get it done before they are married. For
the man who can dance all night with his
sweetheart won't two-step around the room
with his wife, and he who has a never-fail-
ing supply of theater tickets as a beau, has
to be chloroformed before he will part with
the price Of the movies, as a husband.
Therefore, all counts, the girl who likes
to play is wise to have her play time before
she is married, and when she has a play
fellow
Somehow men have an idea that their
sex has a monopoly on good times. They
realize that man must have his fling, but
it never occurs to them that woman must
have hers And anyway, the general mas
culine idea is that there is something so
peculiarly thrilling to a woman in just be-
ing married, and having home of her own,
no matter how dull both are, that all the
fun she wants is just sitting up and gloatng
over her wedding ring.
Which is some mistake, I'll say.
Therefore, a man who has danced, and
frolcked, and who has done all there was
to do, and seen all there was to see, and
who is sick and tired of it all, will marry
little young girl and expect her never to
want to go anywhere, or to have any amuse-
ment. He doesn't even realize how selfish
he is in denying her the pleasure that he
has had.
If I were man, l would want to marry
a girl who had been greatly admired by men
and who had had many men make love to
her. And I should wish to marry a girl
who had had lots of pretty clothes, and who
had had her fill of theaters, and parties and
restaurants.
Then 1 would know that 7 was getting
a wife whose head would not be turned by
the first glib-tongued palaverer who came
along and asked her if she didn't believe in
love at first sight, and told her that the
minute he saw her he had strange feel
ing as if is he had just met his fate-aas!
too late.
And / would know that I was getting q
wife whose idea of heaven was just the
shut-in solitude Of two, in their own homes,
instead of thinking paradise is Gathering
restaurant with jazz band braying in your
ear and lunatics cavorting around among
the tables.
It's the things that we haven't had thaA
we are all mad about. It's the apple We
haven't tasted that risk heaven to set
our teeth into. Familiarity rubs the gilt
off the gingerbread of pleasure. Plenty in
evitably brings safety.
And so, if I were man, should wish
my wife to have cut her wisdom teeth at
her fathers expense, and for her to have
had her picnic before I had to pay the piper,
or even to go on the excursion with her.
Then I should know that when she came
to me she had worked all the flirtatiousness
out of her system, and that she had danced
holes in her slippers, and had had enough
Of folly, and wanted to settle down to the
real business of life.
For I'd have sense enough to know that
every woman must have her play time, and
if she dosent get it in her youth she takes
it later on, and generally with disastrous re-
suits.
easements about the walls, which thus
almost wholly cOmDOSad Of glass Sometimes