Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-06-26
~ HERE is an old saying to the
effect that experience is a
I hard school but fools will

I" HERE is an old saying to the
| effect that experience is a
hard school but fools will
learn in no other.
Alas and alack, most of us are
such dolts, that we do not even profit
to teach US wisdom. We refuse to
learn our lesson even though it is
beaten into us with blows and
| cudgeling and tears.
In all the vagaries of human ma
ture there is nothing stranger than
this, that we so seldom let the past
| be al light Of warning to our feet. We
pitfalls and making the same blum
| ders, and repeating the same mis-
takes Year after year though for ev-
cry one we have had to pay with bit
| ter suffering and unavailing regrets
II have made many mistakes in
| my life" said successful man tc
| me once, "but they have been fresh
made the same mistake the second
| time"
Which is, perhaps, the difference
between the wise man and the fool
| He learned, from experience. Most
people don't.
And it isn't because we have for
gotten the agony we have gone
| through, or that we fail to see the
red flag of danger that experience
flaunts before our eyes. It's because
We are the victims of sort of fatal
| optimism that persuades us that
| this time some sort of a miracle
| will be wrought in our behalf that
will preserve us from the logical out
| come of our folly.
On forty occasions before we may
have had painful proof of what our
| outraged stomachs Thought of a COM
bination of cucumbers, and ice cream,
| and watermelon, but that doesn't
keep us from blithely feasting on the
deadly mixture, and being surprised
when we have to call in the doctor
| later on.
A man will break himself down by
| overwork but instead of letting his
| experience teach him to cFIserve
his strength and his health, the min
ute he gets out of the sanitarium
/ he plunges right back snto the
vortex of business and wrecks him.
| self again.
A woman will buy something at a
bargain sale that she doesn't want
and for which she has no earthly
use because it has been marked down
| from 81 so to $1.47, and then she will
| wonder why she did it and bemoan
such experiences never teaches. he1
| to walk by special sale of fun
merry without even turning to look
! back. She always does the Lots
wife act, no matter how many times
| before she has been sailed.
And why are most households a
dark and bloody domestic battlefield
with husband and wife in a never
| ending scrimmage, except that people
simply refuse to learn anything from
| experience.
During the first couple Of years
after a young. couple get married
, there is some excuse for there being
little conflicts between them, and
| for. the domestic machinery to creak
and groan from time to time.
You cannot take any two people
especially a male and a female per-
son-who come of different blood
who have chad a different training
and environment and look at every
subject, fhpm politics to pie, from a
different angle, and expect them to
merge into a harmonious whole at
| once. They have got to get acquaint-
ed with each other and find out what
each one thinks; they've got to get
the real life measure, not the court
ing measure, of each other; they have
got to find out each others little
peculiarities and weaknesses and
prejudices and bigness and littleness.
1t takes a little time to make these
personal explorations into the char
acter Of your life partner, but once
having diagrammed each others per-
sonality, any husband and wife can
get along together and any domestic
DIant can be run on oiled ba1l-bear-