Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-02-12
DOROTHY DIX TALKS
BY DOROTHY DIX
CAN YOU GUESS 1T?
Copyright, 1920, by the Wheeler Syndi-
cate, Inc.
/ WOMAN asks.
A WOMAN asks:
~ "Why does man enjoy trifling with
woman's heart?

woman's heart?
why dos man use every effort to win -
Woman's love, and then cast it aside as care
lessly as he would toy of which he had
tired?
why does a man spend months, and
sometimes years, in persuading a woman to
marry him, and as soon as he is married an
pareltly lose all interest in her?
why does a man break his neck to get a
home of his own, and when he has got it
break leg in getting away from it,"
1 am sure I don't know These things
merely are. They are idoisynrasies of the
masculine psychology that the feminine
mind cannot fathom. They are the riddle
over which the Sphinx broods in her desert
solitude. They are the great phenomena of
the ages that pncounted generations Of
women have tried to guess and failed
Perhaps as good an answer as any is to
be found in the fact that men are sports
men by nature and gamblers by instinct and
that women chiefly interesting to them
while they are part of the greatest game in
the world, which is the love game.
AS long as a woman is out of mans
reach, she intrig, es his fancy. Her indif-
ference to him piques his vanity, and makes
him put forth every effort to charm her. Her
GOODNESS stimulates his imagination 1t is
ice that he must melt with the warmth "a:
his own devotion. Her inaccessibility lures
him on, and the hsrder she is to capture,
the more determined he is to have her
1t is the spirit of the big game hunter 1t
is the spirit that makes men risk their lives
in jungles, or climbing the prec-pitous faces
of mountains to shoot some animal that is
not even worth taking back to camp. 1t is
the spirit that makes men risk their lives
in fever-infested swamps to find C single in
significant plant, or endure the incredible
hardships of frozen wastes to seek the North
Pole.
1t is this inherent spirit of adventure, of
curiosity about the unknown, a passionate
desire for the unattained, that makes
mans attitude towards a woman entirely
different before he wins her and afterwards.
And this hunter spirit is something that
women never understand, because women
are not born sportsmen.
Therefore, it is almost automatic that the
less a woman wants man, the more he
wants her, and that the more a wants
a woman, the more sure he is to get her.
Men like the coy, the Elusive, the uncer-
tain in woman, but woman likes the SUBJ
stantial the downright, the tangible in man.
A mans ideal woman is always airy, fairy
Lillian, just fluttering beyond the reach OF
his finger-tips and leading him a lance
through life, but woman's ideal man is john
ny-on-the-spot, to whom she tie, and who
lishment as the heartnstone.
There is no surer way to win woman's
heart than by patient siege. A girl may
fout a sutton at first but nine times out or
ten she will end by marrying him if he just
sits fast on her doorstep. But nothing SO
effectively qucers a woman's chance of get
ting the man she wants, as for him to know
that he can have her any time he says the
word. It's the peach that hangs highest on
the tree that whets a mans appetite. Not
l. Il
1t is a pity that women have not intelli-
gence enough to understand that the pas
sion for the chase is the ruling passion for
men, and that the harder a roman runs
ate man, the more speed he makes in
getting away from her. If women realized
this, we should have fewer girls calling men
up on the telephone and demanding to know
why they don't come to see them an, trying
to make dates with unwilling SWANS, and we
should have many, many more weddings.
Girls don't marry because they are too
anxious to marry. There is no excitement
in counting them because they meet a man
mora than halfway. Winning them is like
knocking over chickens that eat out Of your
hand in a barnyard, instead Of shooting wild
ducks the wing. There is no pep nor
thrill to it. Nothing to rouse a mans in
terest. and he doesn't get reused.
And their stupid parents hinder, instead or
help, when they bride young men to come
to the house by means of feeds, and auto
rides and theater tickets, and so on. There
wei few old maids in the days when foxy
fathers and mothers made their daughters
so inaccessible that young men had to plot
and plan to get word with them, and bride
servants to slip them billet doux that were
actionable in breach of promise suit When
Mariana was rocked up in her ROOM Edwin
stole her out her through a window, but
when the front door is thrown wide open and
the whole family is trying to drag Edwin
in he beats it away from the PREMISES.
One of the reasons that business girls
marry oftener than society girls is because
they are harder to win. A girl with good
job is loath to give it up for mere husband.
and it's because she isn't after them that the
men are keen about her.
Perhaps there is no ttterer moment in
woman's life than that one which marks the
end of the honeymoon, when her husband
ceases to make love to her, and to flattcr her.
and drops her down from the pinnacle OF
romance to the dull, cold realities of life,
with thud that lo0sens her back teeth ana
brings her castles of dreams down about her
ears. She is miserable, because she thinks
he has cased to care for her, but this mis-
take. 1t merely means that for him the love
chase is over. He ha got his bag and there
is no use in pursuing the quest further.
It's up to her then, whether he sinks into
the Indifferent husband, secure of his wires
devotion, no matter how he neglects her or 4
she keeps him still interested, and lover.
by keeping him guessing. It's the too GER
tain wives who make the uncertain hus-
bands.
Of course it's cruel thing for a man to
win womans heart for fun, but the hunter
and the hunted always look at sp> TT from d