The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-01-28
Dorothy Dir Tails
PIatonic Friendships
Ut DoRaTHY nIK
WssaA's Highest Psid weman Wxisss.

Nowadays it is far different. Any
woman with intelligence can support
herself quite as we'll as the average
| husband can support her. And with
out working half as hard in store or
office as she would have to do in her
own home. In her profession she can
find never-ending source of interest
and amusement, so that she has some
thing to fill her thoughts and her
hands, and it is no more remarkable
now for a bachelor woman to have
her own apartments, than it is for a
bachelor man.
Under these conditions it has de-
veloped that there are large numbers
of women who do not want to marry.
they look the ground over, and see
that marriage seldom brings happi-
ness to either party. They observe
that their friends who are married
look older than they do, that they are
less well-dressed and live less COM
ferta bly,; that they have no freedom,
and the prospect of exchanging their
geed jobs and individual pecketbooks,
and latch keys just for a mere hus-
band, doesn't look good to them
OF course, if the Prince Charming
of their dreams were to come along,
that would be a different story. But
the supply of Prince Charmings is not
ever-abundant. and most women never
even get a glimpse of him at all
-
marry, but they are not manhaters or
indifferent to the pleasures of mascu-
line society. They are precisely in the
position of the man who enjoys pretty
and attractive women, who likes to
talk to an intelligent and sympathetic
evening on the seashore. for instance,
as flat as an egg without salt, without
the companionship of something young
and charming and fluffy-ruffled. and
yet who does not want to assume any
woman's board bill, and shopping
ticket, or to put his neck in the do
nestle moose. "a
Perhaps the men and women who
take this attitude towards each other
are selfish. Perhaps they are slackers
who evade assuming their snare or
the responsibilities or life. We are
not arguing this point. We are mere
Fly saying that there are as many wom-
en- who are as eager, and determined,
to sidestep natrimony as there are
men, and that these men and these
women have made Platonic friendship
a reality instead of the camouflage
for sentiment that it used to be.
This knowledge that every woman
is not trying to marry, has made for
a great free masonry between the
sexes For the first time men are not
they can indulge their natural craving
for feminine society For even the
most case hardened old bachelors long
for a woman friend, someone to whom
they may pour out, unabashed. the
hopes, the plans and even the boast
ins they would not have the face to
tell another man. Fer men are as
loquacieu with women as they are
dumb with each other. -
OF course, Platonie friendship still
does end very frequently in love. A
man and woman who have been good
comrades and friends. suddenly wake
up to the fact that they are something
more, and that life without each other
would be as ashes and dust.
Andyf of course, Platonic friendship
is not for the woman who wants to
marry. For the man who takes up
her time, and camps on her parlor
chairs, keeps away other men. So,
after all, Platenic friendship is mere
ly the consolation prize for those who
are not sports enough to take a hand
in the big gambling game of matri-
mony.