Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-07-01
PAYING THE PIPEF

She wants to be as free as an I'M
married woman to come and go. She
wants the thing smoney buys though
married to poor man. She wants
to live in idleness, and to make 80
sacrifice of her individuality. She
only wants the kind Of children who
are born in embroidered French mus
lin and blue ribbons and golden curls
and who never howl with collie or
get dirty.
There is no such graft in marriage
as she hoped to find. To most women
marriage means adapting themselves
to crotchety husbands. 1t means sac
rifice. 1t means labor that is never
done. 1t means staying at home and
made-over clothes and few pleasures.
1t means washing little faces and
walking sick babies and hearing les
sons and living in a bedlam of noise.
That's the price woman gener--
x d. and tor is Because aa SO
many are not willing to pay it that
there are so many disgruntled women,
and so many miserable homes. They
thought, poor simple souls, that
thing in the world without giving any
return for it
Nor are men any more willing to
pay the price of matrimony than
women. A man thinks that he can
enjoy all the freedom Of his bachelor
and wife on top of that as a cook
puts a fancy merangue on top of a
pie. He wants to come and go as he
Used to without tears or reproaches
from wife; he wants to stay down.
town for little games with the boys.
without scenes at home; and to take
old women friends out to tea and
lunch without arousing the green
eyed monster in his spouses breast.
He also wants to spend his money
on himself as he used to-, for his idea
of matrimony is as false one as
the girls. He has visioned it as a
place where young and beautiful
wife, always exquisitely dressed and
in an angelic temper, waited In a
vine-wreathed cottage-that was run
on air-to welcome him after his
days work was done-in case he felt
like coming home.
He finds that the marriage bond is
forged of chilled steel and that he
is chained as tightly to his partner
as ever any other two prisoners were
and that no criminal has ever got
more of a life sentence than he. He
finds that marriage reduces the av-
erage man to little more than a wage
slave, who spends his life toiling
for doctors and grocers and butchers
and tailors and dreSsmakers. He
finds that even the best of wives
have their days when they are nerv-
Gus and cross and unreasonable, that
children can be demons and brats as
well as seraphs
The loss of freedom, amending
work, self-sacrif1ced; that is what
a man must pay for matrimony and
many one defaults on the promis-
sorry note he has given a girl in the
days Of courtship.
In the meantime there stands mar
riage; offering just what it always
has to men and women who are will
ling to pay the price-a devotion
that never fails. Loyalty that sticks
through thick and thin, and good and
evil days. Tenderness like the ten
derness of God. The cling of babies
arms about the neck. Price in stall
wart sons and lovely daughters. The
renewal of your life in your chill
dren's life. The serenest, purest hap
piness that ever comes to a human
being.
But you must pay the price, for
life is the memorable debt collector
that exacts the last farthing for ev-
erything she gives
You cannot have your wedding cake
and eat it, too. You must pay the
price.