The Covington leader. (Covington, Tenn.) 18??-current, 1920-09-09
TIE TIE THAT BINDS

hope to goodness that the knot will
hold this time. and it won't be one Of
| the one-out-of-twelve snarls that the
divorce courts are called upon to
untangle every year in this country.
And It sends US home wondering
what is this tie that binds a man and
woman together SO that they are
really one.
Men think that it is made of
Ibeauty. A man believes that he will
/ love a woman, and be faithful to her
/ in thought and deed as long as she
Il EASY on the ewes. His farcy is
shared BY pretty face and 1.-The
some figure and he is convinced that
he viii never wearv Of them. He
feels that life can offer him no more
enduring jov than just the the con-
formulation Of that peaches and cream
complexion those golden curls and
that STRAIGHT front figure.
Very often he married the object
If his affections only to find that the
tie that binds him to it is made Of
packthread. He comes to know that
a man can not live upon scenery
alone. that woman may be liv-
ing picture and the dullest and most
BORING Of comnanions and that the
whitest and softest skin NAV cover
the blacklist selfishness and the hard
est heart.
No woman who has merely physi-
cal prettiness to recommend her ever
holds a man even until her good
looks vanish and that is a catastro-
phe that is bound to happen in a
short time AS we'll might you seek
to anchor an ocean liner in a storm
with gay silken thread as to try
to bind a man to a woman with just
beauty alone.
Women think that the tie that
binds is made Of romantic love, They
put their faith in palpitations and
thrills. If a girl sees a man through
a pink haze of sentiment that dis
guises him so effectually that he
looks like a little tin god to her; if
she has chills and fevers and hectic
flushes at his approach; if she won
ders where mother keeps the rough
on-rats every time she suspects that
he has taken another girl to the
movies she is convinced. beyond the
shadow of a doubt. that she enter
tains a passion for him that nothing
can dim, and that the years viii only
make stronger
Alas, no other dangerous malady
is so easily cured as romantic love.
1t yields to simple home treatment
self administered, in from 80 to go
days. Sometimes sooner. The bride.
who had expected to spend the bal
ance of her life listening to her hus-
band conjugating the verb to love.
finds out he mostly discourses about
bills and the high cost of living and
how different his mothers biscuits
are from hers.
Instead Of barbered and pow
dered and perfumed lover, she has a
husband who is unshaven and UNI
shorn, and grumpy and grouchy at |
times, and noting these things. ro-
mantle love flies out Of the window.
and unless the tie that binds her to
the man she has chosen is stronger |
than sentimentahty unless it is
made up of some quality more en-
during than looks and soft speeches
why, the woman packs her trunk |
and goes back to mother. or begins
to look about for some other man
about whom she can cast the mantle
of her fancies.
Convention says that the tie that
binds man and a woman together
is made up of the law and church.
Wrong again. You may tie mans
and wonan's bodies together and
force them to live under the same
roof, but no human agency can fetter
a soul or constrain it. Nor does the
reading of a marriage ceremony over
a couple or the mumbling of priest
make man and woman husband and |
wife in the real sense of that rela-
tionship
We all know husbands and wives
whose marriage bonds clank as they
move among US as does the ball and
chain of convicts fettered together.
We all know lonely men and women
who live out dreary lives with wives
and husbands who sit across the
table from them in the flesh, but are
of leagues away from them
in the spirit.
The tie that binds is not even duty.
That holds outwardly with many con-
scientious ptople. especially when
there are children to be considered,
but it is fetter that cuts into the
very marrow of ones being and thar
makes a tester that poisons the whole
Of life. 1t is not what wemean when
we sing "Blest Be the Tie That
Binds" at wedding.
The tie that binds, that hardens
and hardens as the years go by until
it becomes like a bond of steel that
can break, is made up Of
sympathy and understanding and APP
probation. Age may come and
beauty may go, romantic love may
perish, hardship and sickness and
anxiety and poverty may be the por-
ton of the man and woman who have
undertaken the journey Of life to-
gether
1t does not matter They will pull
through safely if they are bound to-
gether with bond whose strands
are made Of companionship and
trusted and tried loyalty and compre-
hension that never fails.
That is the tie that binds. That |
is the tie that every man and woman |