The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-06-28
Dorothy Dix Talks
What Has Life Taught Your.
NJ DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer.


, 1t takes a little time to make these
ter of your life partner, but once hav-
ing diagramed each others personality,
any husband and wife can get along
together and any domestic plant can
be run on oiled ball bearings if only
the party of the first part and the
party of the second part have intelli-
gence enough to learn little from ex-
perience.
It doesn't take a woman long to find
out that her husband has a naive van
ity about posing as the head of the
house; and that he hates to be asked
where he is going, and that certain
subjects have the same effect upon
him that a red flag has on a mad bull.
How more than stupid of her, then,
not to ask his opinion on every subject
whether she takes it or not; not to re-
frain from nagging and not to clamp
the lid down, good and tight, on the
topics that are anathema to him.
But instead of learning life's little
lesson that would assure them devoted
husbands and peaceful homes, the
great majority of wives learn nothing
from the experience of a hundred
fights that have left their hearts
wounded and SCARED and they go
along precipitating the rows that will
end in a banged door shut behind an
angry husband and a pillow wet with
unnecessary tears
Nor is there any man of ordinary
, intelligence who hasn't found out
within six months after marriage ex-
actly how to work his Maria. He as
certained that it isn't safe to admit to
ever having particularly noticed
another woman even if she's homely
as sin and 100 years old; that it's
diplomatic to call ones wife's tempe
nerves. and that she will forgive her
husband anything so long as he tells
her fat is becoming, and she grows
more beautiful with age.
But how few men cash in their
dearly bought knowledge of femininity
and get therefore wives who eat out
of their hands and celebrate their viz
tues in the market place? No. They
80 on ignoring their experience of how
manage woman, and expect her TO
De reasonable and sensible. and mourn
because she is not.
Perhaps tho, the most inexplicable
failure to learn from experience is
furnished by those people who have
made the trip from wealth to poverty,
and back again, and who gaily hit the
toboggan slide for the second descent.
There is no blinking the terrors of
poverty. and to none are they so hor-
rible as to those who have been used
to affluence. To have been nurtured
in the lap of plenty; to have known
the freedom and independence that a
full pocketbook gives: to have never
worn anything but good clothes and
had good food, beautiful and culti
waited surrounds: to have always had
everything that goes with evening
dress" as Kipling puts it.
Then to wake up to find ones self
oil Of ha c
slipped thru ones fingers; to be tor
tured with anxiety as to where the
next meal is to come from, to have to
wear shabby clothes whose very touch
irritates one; to be doomed to the hell
of dirty, sordid surroundings. what
suffering b1;o, can be grSater(wh"t fate
You would think that the men and
women who had once had money and
lost 1t would be perfect misers, afraid
TO spend. cent, if luck again smiled
upon them, but in the great majority
of cases no such thing happens.
Those who have wasted their sub
stance the first time turn spenders
again and throw it away the second
time as carelessly as if there was no
black memory of want in the back of
their heads to warn them that money
I has wings. Those who have gambled
away their fortunes on hair Drained
schemes or trying to break Wall street,
take another turn at the Wheel of
Chance.
They have learned nothing from ex-
perience.
Experience is hard school, but
fools ill .eHrI in no other. We NAV
well take this &c heart. What has life
taught you Are you one of the fools
who never iearn-or the wise man
who never makes a mistake second
time"