Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-09-23
A YOUNG man writes to me that
II he is engaged to be married
"A to a girl who is his opposite


He is very religious. She is very
worldly minded.
He is thrifty. She is extravagant
and wasteful.
He is a professional man, interest
ed in serious reading. She. never
notes and the society page in the
newspapers.
He thinks a great deal of his duty
towards others. She is only selfishly
bent on getting the best for herself.
He is amiable. She is high-tem-
her own mother.
Now, although this sir fascinates
the young man, and he loves her
dearly, he doubts the wisdom of mar
rying her, and asks me what think
about 1t, and if he can change the
girl. into something nearer to his
ideal of what a woman should be.
I think that marriage between peo-
pie who look at life from opposite
standpoints, and whose tastes differ
on every subject from politics to pie,
is madness. The holy estate is bound
for them, on which they fight out to a
finish every question that arises be-
tween them.
Nobody's ideal Of being happy is
to be scrappy. The people whom we
love and enjoy being with, are not
I1lOSG WHO uo at OESA
turn and who keep our fur rubbed
continually the wrong way. Those
of whose society we never tire are
the congenial souls who think as we
think, who are interested in the same
subjects We are, who enjoy the same
things that we do, who can even
mount the same hobbies that we ride
and canter along contentedly at our
sides.
This is particularly true of matri-
mony where happiness or misery is
made ZIP, for the msot part, Of null
titude of little things. comparative
ly few husbands and wives commit
any great sin against each other, but
multitudes of husbands and wives
bore each other to extinction because
they have no common interest, or
they get on each others nerves be-
cause they differ on every subject
under the sun.
A woman who is as interested in
her husbands business as he is, can
make an evening at home thrlll1ngly
interesting for both of them by us
tening with bated breath while ne
discourses about the grocery trade,
or discusses his patients or his law
patients with her, whereas, the wife
who yawns in her husbands face
when he tries to tell her of his life
work, can send him to the club for
company, and shed tears over her
own forlornness in being life alone
A religious man can have his heart
broken by a wife who sneers at his
faith, and he can be kept in a per-
petual wrangle over points Of dog
ma. Many family has been broken
up over infant baptism and open or
close communion.
On the other hand, no married cou-
Piles are so happy as those who go
hand in hand to the same church, or
who have the same grand opera or
moving picture taste.
1t is far more important than
young people realize for a man and
woman who are about to marry to
think alike, and to hold the same
ideals. That is, If they want to be
happy. For the attraction of oppo-
sites is a devilish contrivance of
natives for the good of the species.
1t takes no account of the well-heing
of the individual. The very qualities
of unlikeness that drew people to-
gether before marriage and which
,piqued the interest of the other, after
marriage drives them apart. The
girl, for instance. who is like a
little playful kitten, and with about