Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-12-04
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
Domestic HumOr
Copyright, 1920, by the Wheeler Syndi-
cate, Inc.

young wife is very much hurt and be-
wildered. She is married to man whom
she loves with all her heart and who appears
to be very fond of her. He praises her man.
agement Of their little home He hands her
bouquets about her thrift and &C, ,omy. He
smacks his lips over her cooking, and when
they are alone together, or just with men,
bers of their respective families, he registers
every earmark of being happy and con-
tented husband, who thinks that he has
drawn a capital prize in the matrimonial LOT
terry.
Let strangers come in, however, or let
them be out at some party, and it's different
story. Then the husband groans loudly over
the expense of having to support a famil-,.
and represents himself as = poor hen-peckSe
creature who has to punch the home tins,
CLOCK on the minute. He warns all the H.,
married men not to be as foolish as he was
and slip their necks into the domestic halter.
ana ne BOAST that II he were free no woman
would ever be smart enough catch him.
The wife cannot understand whv her hus
band acts so differently at homo and abroad.
she is hurt md mo- titled at the attitude he
puts her in, AMI she wonders i: he really ia
sorry that he married her. and Would like to
be rid of her, why he doesn't come out and
tell her privately, instead of proclaiming 1t
publicly ~
The poor little wife doesn't know, as she
Will know when she has cut her matrimon-
lal lsdom teeth, that her husband doesn't
mean thing by his filings at marriage and
his aspersion of her character. He is mere
~ trying to be witty. and IS making his lit
tie joke after the time-honored formula Of
husbands.
The oldest wheeze in the world is the
mother-in-law joke. The second oldest is the
man-who-is- sorry-he-married joke Both of
them date back about four thousand years
B. c., but they are sill in good working or
der, and every man who gets married takes
mem on the shelf, dusts them off, and
starts them going again.
Why man should want to make the
woman he loves figure Of fun, and hold
her up to ridicule before lot of guffawing
fools, nobody knows. There is no other
torture so exquisite as being laughed at, and
yet many husband ruthlessly subjects his
shrinking, and sensitive wife to this cruel or
deal, for the sake of being funny
All OF us know men whose best stories
center around some popularity in their
wives. All Of us have sat at dinner tables
and listened to some coarse-fbered, triple
ch1nned, husband, with hide like rhinoc-
erous, relate some alleged pisode about his
wife which showed her up in an idoitic light.
while his poor victim looked at him with the
| eyes OF a hurt rabbit, and tried to smile to
hide the trembling of her lips, and we have
wished that we could get up and take the
| carving knife to him, instead Of having to
politely applad him.
Of course women are funny; so are men
The cardonic test of creation is human ma
| ture. There is not one of us whose eccen-
tricities would not make screaming car
toon, especially with little touching up
here and there.
That is why anyone who is cruel enough
| to pick out the mental or physical defects
| of other people and hold them I'D to ridicule
can always get the reputation of being anus
ing, and raise laugh. But it is the cheap.
est form of wit, and the most cowardly.
Perhaps if men realized how deeply they
stabbed into their wives hearts with their
domestic jokes, they would forbear to use
the deadly weapon, even If it did make a
Roman holiday for their friends. Apparent
ly it does not occur to the average husband
that 1T does not amuse his wife to hear him
say that she is burden, and killjoy to
him, and that he regards himself as nothing
less than red lantern to warn other men
against matrimony.
Nor does man seem to think that his wife
will do anything but chortle with mirth over
the side-splitting account he gives Of her
| trade with the rag man, or her run-in with
the janitor, though he would never forgive
her if she barbed her wit with his weakness
es, or set company in roar with the vera
cious account of the time he bought gold
brick and fought cabby.
Humor always depends upon whose OK is
gored, and the merit of joke depends upon
whom it Is on.
If woman has the ill-luck to be married
to man who thinks he is funny, and who
yearns to be a laugh-getter, she has only
two solaces; one is, that when a man jokes
his wife, it is really sign that he is fond
Of her and approves of her, little as 1t would
appear to indicate. The man who IS really
irritated by his wife's shortcomings never
laughs over them in public. He swears at
them in private, and none who is actually
henpecked ever mentions the fact. The man
who pretends to > afraid of his wife, and
to be bossed by her, Is the one who is per-
fectly sure that he is the unquestioned head
of his own house.
The other consulate for the wife OF the
domestic joker is to cultivate her sense of
humor and while she probably never see
how funny she is herself, she can get most
amusing vision of how ridiculous her hus-
band is, trying to be cutup.
But. as a matter Of fact joke In the
family circle is dangerous bomb.
When it explodes, it skaters the peace, and
somebody always gets hurt.
TENED to--by man to have man hear
her through, and not interrupt with some
brilliant bon-mot of his own!
You can charm her by thinking about her.
By remembering her preferences, her
birthday the thing she said last night, the
dress she wore the first time you met, her