The Topeka state journal., 1921-09-20
Dorothy Dix Tails
No Fool LAIze an Old Fool.
: BIZ DOROTHY DIX
worlds highest Paid Woman WFater.

No Fool Like an Old Fool.
have received a letter from a man
who says that he is sixty-four years
old. He has been married for nearly
forty years, and has children and
grandchildren. He has been success
/ full in business and amassed a COM
! Portable fortune, and has led a re-
specta BILE, God-fearing life, and is a
pillar in the community in which he
lives.
| But now he has fallen in love with
girl in her twenties, and he wants
to divorce his wife and marry her. No
there's not thing the matter with
his wife. She's as good a woman as
ever lived, and she worked shoulder
| to shoulder with him during all the
years that they were getting a start in
| life, and, of course, he will provide
well for her financially. The trouble
| is that she's an old woman at sixty,
done with romance, while at sixty-four
he feels himself a young and senti-
mental boy
! And he wants to know what I think
about it. Why, I think that he should
! go and hang on the doors of the near
/ est lunatic asylum until they take him
| in and lock him up in a padded cell
here he will be safe until his attack
of mental alteration is over.
! He is suffering from a brain storm,
| poor thing, and it isn't safe for him to
be at large with his nice. fat pocket
book in a world that is full of greedy
young vampires. who are lust look
| ing for dotty. rich old men upon whom
they can feast.
AS for his being in love with a girl
young enough 10 be his granddaugh-
ter, poof--thats an illusion, while as
for his believing that she loves him
that's a delusion that any competent
alienist would pronounce an unnnis-
flrs hi RI
Such things don't happen in real
! life. Old bones don't suddenly get
rejuvenated. Old hearts, that have
gone along doing their work for forty
years with no more emotion than a
steam pump, don't all at once begin
to thrill, and culver, and palp!tate.
Romantic love no more comes back
to the man of sixty-four than an apple
| tree blossoms in December, and the
man who thinks that he can play
| Romeo with one foot in the grave is
| simply the victim of mania.
Nor do young girls fall in love with
old men. You never hear of beau
| tiful young heiress falling in love with
an aged pauper. 1t is always d poor
young girl who persuades some rich
old idiot that he has won her unso-
| phisticated affections. The old man,
| who thinks that a young girl is in
! love with his charms, is seeing things,
| and needs a keeper.
Leaving out of the discussion the
dastardly wrong that a man does in
| foresaking the faithful old wife who
| has given her life to his service who
| has borne him children, who has
nursed him in sickness and who has
| cherished him in ealth, and whose
industry and thrift have done jdst as
much towards building up his success
as his labor has, it is an act offs un-
rnitigated folly, just for his own sake,
| for an old man to swap an oId9wife
| for a new one. He gets nothing out
| of it but misery and regret.
In the first place he makes himself
an object of derisicn and contempt to
| all who know him. He is a figure OF
fun of mocking and ridicule, because
everybody sees how easily he has been
taken in by an adventures. Hard
| headed business men no longer trust
| his judgment, because he has given
unmistakable evidence that his mind
is weakening, and he is becoming silly
and senile.