Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-06-26
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
WHAT HAS LIFE TAUGHT YOU?
BY DOROTHY DIX
The Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer
Copyright, 1920, by the Wheeler Syndicate, Inc.)

ings if only the party Of the first
part and the party Of the second part,
have intelligence enough to learn
little from experience.
1t doesn't takes a woman long to
find out that her husband has a
naive vanity about posing as the
head of the house; and that he hates
to be asked where he is going, ana
that certain subjects have the same
effect upon him that a red flag has
on a mad bull. .<s
How more than stupid of her. then,
ject whether she takes it or not;
not to refrain from nagging and
not to clamp the lid down, good and
tight, on the topics that are anathema
to him.
But instead of learning life's little
lesson that would assure them. de-
voted husbands and peaceful homes
the great majority of wives learn,
nothing from the experience of a.
hundred fights that have left their
go along precipitating the rows that
will end in banged door shut be-
hind an angry husband and a pillow
wet with unnecessary tears.
Nor is there any man Of ordinary
intelligence who hasn't found out
exactly how to work his Maria. He's
ascertained that it isn't safe to
admit to ever having particularly
noticed another woman even If she's
homely as sin and 100 years old;
that it's diplomatic to call ones
will forgive\ her husband anything
so long as he tells her fat is be-
coming and she grows more beau.
tiful with age. .
But Low few men cash in their
dearYT bought knowledge of fem1nf-
ty and get therefor wives who eat
out of their hands and celebrate their
virtues in the market place? No.
They go on ignoring their experience
of how to manage woman, and ex-s
pect her to be reasonable and sensi7.
BILE, and mourn because she is not.
Perhaps, though, the most mex
plicable failure to learn from expert
ence is furnished by those people
who have made the trip from wealth
to poverty, and back again, and who
gaily hit the toboggan slide for the
second descent. 81
There is no blinking the terrors
Of poverty, and to none are they so
horrible as to those who nave been
used to affluence. To have been nur-
tured in the lap of plenty; to have
known the freedom and independence
that a full pocketbook gives; to have
never worn anything but good clothes
and had good food. beautiful and Gull
tivated surroundings; to have Al
ways ndQ every tHlIIS SIltI BOoS with
evening DRESS" as Kipling puts it.
Then to wake to find ones self
penniless, that all of ones money has
slipped through ones ingerS; to be
tortured with anxiety as to where
the next meal is to come from, TO
have to wear shabby Clothes whose
very touch irritates one; to be
doomed to the hell Of dirty, sordid
surroundings, what suffering can be
greater-what fate more cruel?
You would think that the men
and women who had once had money
and lost it would be perfect nisers.
afraid to spend a. cent, If luck again
smiled upon them, but in the great
majority of cases no such thing hap
pens.
Those who have wasted their sub
stance the first time, turn spenders-
again and throw 1t away the second
time as carelessly as If there was
no black memory of want in the
back of their heads to warn them
that money has wings. Those who
have gambled away their fortunes
on hair brained schemes or trying
to break Wall street, take another
turn at the wheel of chance.
They have learned nothing from
experience.
Experience is a hard school. but
fools will learn in no other. We may
we'll take this to heart. What has
life taught you? Are you one OF
the fools who never learn-or the
wise man who never makes mis-
take the second time?