Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-10-13
DOROTHY DIX DISCUSSES LIFE
TALKS ON HEART AND HOME

Besides, environment is so much
more powerful than blood that you
can come pretty close to making any
child what you will if you get II
young enough, and take the trouble
to train it in the way it should go.
And there's probably no other in
vestment in the world that pays such
dividends in happiness as does the
money and work we put in on
child. 1t gives new pep and inter-
est to life. 1t brings joy and sun
shine into a home. 1t renews our
own youth.
1t is. the curse of age that we grow
tired of ourselves and lose interest in
ourselves. Our lives are lived. Our
fortunes told. All that we are going
to do we have done. So, when we are
old, we must take our pleasures and
indulge in our ambitions vicariously.
And we can only do this through our
children. Happy those to whom God
sends children of their own. Wise
those who adopt orphan children
when they have none of their own,
so that their age is not left lonely
nor their houses desolate.
DOROTHY DIX.
Dear Dorothy DIX am enga ged
to a young man with whom l am
very much in love, and I know he
loves me, but we quarrel continually
and about the most trivial things.
Neither c. us is especially high-tem'
pered. We get along amiably with
other people, but we seem to antago-
uize each other at every turn. What
sort of a home will we make if we
marry? l cannot bear to think of a
life of continual strife-of misunder-
standings and reproaches and apollo
gies and making up
Answer:
I should certainly advise you,
Suzanne, to think long and earnest
ly before you marry a man who is
temperamently antagonistic to you.
You know there are people who
just rub us the wrong way, just as
there are other people whose pres
ence is soothing and agreeable to us.
Why this is, we do not know. 1t
simply is one of the facts of nature
that there are men and women whose
every act irritates us, no matter how
blameless they are, and whom we
instinctively oppose no matter which
side Of question they take.
Strangely enough, this natural an.
tagonism Often exists side by side
with love. You see it often between
mothers and daughters, and sisters
and brothers who fight like the Kill
kenny cats, yet will make any sacri-
flee for each other.
But it does not make for happiness
and a peaceful home, and the only
sensible thing for such people is not
to try to live together.
Still more important is It for such
oil-and-water nature not to try to
blend by matrimony. They are never
really mated though they may be
married for fifty years. Nature,
which cares only for the good Of the
race, ard not at all for the individual,
has ordained the law of the attrac-
ton of opposites, but we yield to it
at our peril, for those whom we love
long and whose society never pals
upon us are those with whom we are
congenial-those who think and feel
as we do, and have the same tastes
and habits.
This is particularly true as regards
husbands and wives. No husband
and wife IRE happy who are always
scrapping, nor is the family circle
that is a place of perpetual argu-
ments and pickering any ones ideal
Of home.
Therefore, Suzanne, as you value
your happiness don't marry the man
who is always getting on your nerves
and rousing your fighting blood Pick
out some youth who is tuned up in
your own key.
Copyright, 1929