Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-03-17
DOROTHY DIX
DISCUSSES
LIFE

BY DOROTHY DIX
Choose the More Valuable Side of
Life and Let the Less Important
One Drop
"AE greatest defect of the fem
mime sex is that it lacks a
sense of value.
The average woman seems utter
ly incapable of distinguishing be-
tween the all-important and the I'M
important, or of telling the differ
ence between the vital and the
trivial.
She carries no mental scales in
which to weigh one course of action
against another, so she may see on
which side her well-being pulls
down the heaviest. She applies no
acid to every situation so she may
find out which is pinchbeck and
which contains the real gold for
her happiness.
SO she goes cropping along
through life, making mistakes that
could so easily have been avoided,
doing foolish things instead of wise
ones; frittering away in useless ef-
fort and energy, the time, the mon
ey that should have won her sue
cess, all because she has never TAX
en- the trouble to study the relative
value of things.
Yet these very women who are
so dull to spiritual values are Keen
enough about material ones. You
couldn't persuade them that pair
of cotton stockings are as fine as
a pair of silk and lace ones to save
your life. No skinned milk mas
0uerades as cream with them. Ihey
know why it is better to buy the
thing, that is all wool and q yard
wide. and that will stand the wear
and tear of daily use without SraZ-
zling around the edges, than 1T Is
to put your money in some toollsn'
gay. flimsy stuff that may eaten
your eye for the moment, put that
single wearing will reduce to rags
Curiously enough, It is Wheh
women confront the duties Of wife
hood and motherhood that they
seem to most lose all sense of val
| lies anu u NC dItCAly
separate the domestic sheep from
the goats, so to speak.
Take the matter of Housekeeping,
! for instance. Obviously, it is every
married woman's duty to keep a
neat, clean, orderly house and to
set well-cooked nourishing meals
before her husband and her chill
dren. So far, so good, but many
women are so impressed with the
duty of being OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
that they forget to be anything but
cooks and scrub women.
They feed the bodies of their fam
lilies, but they do not feed their
hearts and minds. They neglect
their own personal appearance.
They grow dull and uninteresting,
and in time their husbands and
children come to regard them as
merely the servants they have made
of themselves.
You will find plenty of families
in which a woman will interrupt a
| lover-like speech from her husband
to tell him that the coal is out, and
| that the butcher bill is outrageous
this month. Many a mother will
silence the confidence that shy
| child was about to make to her by
| telling it to take it's hand off the
| table, and for goodness sake not to
| track so much mud on the floor.
Such women, in trying to make
| their families comfortable, forget
that a wife and mother should also
| be a spiritual help to her family,
They have lost their sense of values.
There are other women who are
not robust. They have little strength
and when they exhaust this on
| household tasks it leaves them with
| tangled nerves, cross, fretful, lmpa-
tent, moody, Respondent.
Half of the homes that husbands
and children regard as places OF
torment are made that way by WON.
en- who had no sense of values, ana
who thought it was more important
| to have doilies on the dinner table,
and elaborate meals than it was to
| be placid and pleasant, and jolly,
and agreeable. They could have
saved themselves the fatigue that
| is the mother of irritabiltiy by hav-
| ing fewer dewdabs about the house,
and palmer food and so kept them
| selves sane and sweet, but they
| thought it more important to keep
their pantry shelves orderly than
to keep their bodies in order.
Yet there isn't man or a child
on earth who wouldn't rather have
corned beef and cabbage with a
| Jolly woman at the head of the table
than a ten.course banquet served
| by a nagging, fretful, overworked,
\ xryifn mother who
| is always on the verge of hysterla.
There are other women who con
slider that they do their highest duty
| to their children when they sacrlflce
! their whole lives to them. Mother
| goes shabby that the children may
| have indulgences that rich childr i
| have. Mother sits UP till all hours
that Mamie may have as much hand
embroidery on her dress as the other
! girls have. Mother never goes any
where She never reads anything
She is working too hard for her chill
dren.
She hasn't any time for anything
else. She hasn't any time to make
home interesting, so her chlldren
! find their amusement on the streets
| She doesn't know the people they
know, so she has no chance to guide
them in the selection of their TRENDS
She has no time to get acquainted
with them or to play with them, sc
they never confide in her.
False values again. 1t doesn'
make a particle of difference wheth
err Mamie had five tucks or 1,OOC
tucks in her petticoat, but it makes
a lot of difference that Mamie
doesn't know mother we'll enough t.
tell her that she is meeting boys