The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-11-26
Dorothy Dix Tails
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worries Highest Paid Woman writer
Givers and Takers-f.

Do you go fifty-fifty with the
world?
Do you give back as much as you
take from others, or do you expect
other people to do all of the giving
and to be merely a taker yourself?
You know the kind of people I
men. Good, kindly, intelligent people
who would like to have friends and
acquaintances, but who can live in a
community without having more than
nodding acquaintance with anybody
in it. Nobody likes them because no.
body knows them, and because they
have stayed shut up in their shells
like hermit crabs.
They have never tried to get ac-
quainted with the people about them.
They have never done a neighborIy
thing. They never said a word of
sympathy to the man who worked at
the next desk to theirs when his only
child s.ckened and died. They never
showed that they were glad when the
man above them went still higher.
They never helped some poor scared
little beginner, and showed him or her
how to do the work so as to hold
down his or her job.
Yet these people bitterly resent
their isolation. They want others to
be friendly to them, to weep with
them in their sorrows and rejoice with
them over their good fortune, and to
lend them helping hand in time of
need, and they can't understand whv
they are left alone.
4 just can't make the first ad-
Vances towards being friendly with
people" they will say.
Why not? What is there SO won
derful about any one of us that we
should expect our fellow creatures to
seek us out and court our favor? Are
was so much better worth knowing
than our neighbOrs that people should
NV
LroW not. To expect others to
make all the advances in acquaint-
anceship is the quintescence of self
Concert, and II gets punished as it de-
serves Precious few take the trouble
10 drag the reeluse from his cell, or
10 warm up the human clam until he
becomes fit for human consum ption
Most of US prefer people who are as
glad to know US as we are to know
them. and who meet us half way.
There are too many good fellows in
the world to make it worth while to
nave TO thaw out some little frozen
barnacle and persuade him or her to
come out of his or her shell, and play
with Es.
Are you a giver or a taker in your
home? If you are a man do you eX-
pect your wife to meet you with a
CHEEKY smile on her face. and a good
dinner, and make everything pleasant
consider that you have done your part
when you pay the bills? Do you
crouch around the house and dump
all your nerves and temper on your
defenseless family, and make yourself
about as pleasant companion as a
sore-headed bear would be-
Plenty of men do that. They con-
slider that making a happy home is
the wife's duty and that they are not
expected to contribute even so much
as a pleasant word to the process.
They think that their wives should
study their moods and learn to be
diplomatic ana handle them with
gloves, and they never dream that it
is as much their business to get along
with their wives. and handle their
feelings with kid gloves.
Yet it is. A woman is no more mar
ried to a man than he is to her. She
is no more responsible for the sun
shine in the home than he is. And 1t
is just as much up to him to deal with
, her on a diplomatic platform Is 1t is
hears to work him SO subtly that he
never suspects that she has his num-
Der and combination at her finger
tins