The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-12-29
Dorothy Dix Talks
By DOROTHY DIX
worlds Highest Paid Woman WFieeE.
The Sense of Humor-2


Without doubt, it takes a woman
with keen sense Of humor to regard
her husband as a joke and to laugh
with him, and a little at him, when
he occasionally takes a glass too much
of wine, or loses more than he can
afford at poker, or when he lets some
pretty little chicken, young enough to
be his daughter flatter him into max
ing an elderly spectacle OF himself.
Yet surely. the wife who can smile at
these vagaries of a husband, and see
that they really mean nothing, and do
not endanger her interests at all, is a
happier woman than she who breaks
her heart over them. And she binds
her husband to her with hoops of
steel, for no husband can ever be
grateful enough to the wife who is
jolly, instead of being reproachful.
1t is, however, in her own individual
business of being a woman that a
woman most needs her sense of humor
to save her from being a figure of
fun to her acquaintances.
The woman with a sense of humor
never commits the folly, for instance,
of thinking that she can camouflage
on enough paint and dye that she can
make sixty pass for sixteen. She
never serves old mutton dressed as
spring lamb
The woman past middle age may
still have a young heart, and a youth
full zest in life, but she looks into her
mirror and if she has a sense of hu-
NOR she smiles at the old face she sees
reflected there, and goes and buys
clothes suitable to her time of life in
stead of the spangled knee length
skirts that she might really like to
wear.
Above all. a sense of humor is a
woman's best safeguard against the
absurdity of posing as a man killer
long after all the charms that might
once have allured lovers to her feet
are gone. Haven't you felt like Weep
ing out of one side of your mouth and
laughing out of the other at hideous
and haggard old women who try to
tease themselves about boys that
might have been their grandsons? [
have known these humorless old imbe-
Giles to send themselves flowers and
candy in order that they might smirk
and smile, and lie about it's being the
tribute of some admirer, and who
were always talking about, my best
BEAU" and my best young man.
and who represented every man who
was even civil to them as being des-
perately enamoured of them.
Such women are a mockery and a
byword to the ribald and fill the dis
corning with pity for a lack of humor
that prevents them from seeing what
sardonic caricature they are of
youthful romance.
It is a lack of the sense of humor
that makes women brag, and boast,
and pretend, and pose as being some
thing they are not. We all know the
woman who has never read anything
but the six best sellers, who pretends
to be literary and profound. and falls
into the first trap that any one lays
for her feet; the woman who pretends
she belongs to the four hundred, and
calls millionaires by their Christian
names; the woman who does not need
money but who takes boarders for
company. and goes to work because
she wants something interesting to do;
the woman whose daughter has Just
refused q millionaire, and whose son
declines to become a bank president
because his artistic soul revolts at the
sordidness of finance: the woman who
is so irresistibly attractive that strange
men fall in love with her at sight, and
whose marvellous purity of soul alone
saves her from temptation.
Surely, a sense of humor would save
us all from becoming braying asses
trumpeting lying information about
how great and wonderful we are to a
disbelieving public. For the world
listens and laughs behind its hand,
having already taken our exact num-
Der. which is most amusing3y different
from the figures we furnish.
1t has been said that we all miss a
good joke in not being able to see our
selves are we really are. Certainly
women do. and that is why If I were a
Fairy Godmother I would give every
girl baby a sense of humor that would
enable her to smile at her own pecu-
liarities in order that others might not
laugh at them
,CCpyriSnt. 1926 Dy rbe 0EeeIsF cyndlcses
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