Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-05-05


Y )NE of us has the courage to
~ own up to our faults and to
admit that when we do wrong
1t is because we are poor weazlings
without the strength and the back
bone to control ourselves, or to stand
up and do the thing that We know
we should do.
Hence we have invented a lot of
singenious little alibis for our pet
sins, and we hide behind them in
the fond belief that nobody will rec
osnize them for what they are, or
find out their real names.
Nerves. for instance, is our ali
bi for temper. You never hear
woman confess that she is a virago,
and that she raves like fish when
things do not go to please her. She
never admits that it is temper that
makes her spank the baby and,
shake her three-year-old and scold
the cook and read the riot act to
her husband if he comes home half
AN hour late. Nor does a man adj
NIT that it is fear of his temper that
makes his family walk on eggs when
he is about, or that causes him to
go into frozen silence that is worse
than any amount of cursing and
SWEARING. No. High-tempered people
never speak of their tempers. They
railways discourse about their poor
NERVES
Temperament is the alibi for lazi-
mess. Almost every family has
dead beat member Of it who gratis
q living on the balance of them. If
the temperamental one is of the fe-
male persuasion, she lies abed while
mother and sisters do all the house
work and bring up her breakfast. If
the other girls don't marry, they go
to work and help support the family,
but she never does hands turn,
because the thought of sitting in
an office or standing behind a coun-
ter all day is more than her. exquisite
sensibilities will bear. Coarser fiber
ed women can endure the contact
sFith the outside world. but not she.
If the temperamental one is a
SSnan, he let's mother and sisters
support him because he never finds
just the work that appeals to his
artistic nature. He scorns vulgar
trade. He would like to be a great
singer or a great writer, if it didn't
take so much work TO make one
great artist. So he signs, and asks
@xy1o t. 10 a. vI&< i, Lit b
1y constituted as he is, and whom all
contact with the rough world jars.
No, the people who have the hook
worm or who were born too tired to
work never admit that they are
always temperamental.
my husband desn't understand
me-" is the abb that many women
offer for being bad wives. No WON
an ever coufesses that she has been
O failure as a wife. She doesn't adj
unit that she has never honestly
Q tried to make a go of matrimony.
, She never faces the TRUTH. even to
herself, that she has been selfish,
and peevish, and unreasonable; that
she has never tried to make her
home a place of peace, and COM
fort, and cheer; that she has never
shown her husband any affection or
consideration.
On the contrary, she magnifies his
faults. She persuades herself that
she is of finer clay than he is, and
that he is a poor worm of the dust
who cannot follow her soul flights.
Therefore, she pities herself instead
of being sorry for him, and her con-
science does not trouble her for TAX
ing money from a husband to whom
she gives nothing in return. What
women would do without the excuse
that their husbands do not under
stand them, heaven alone knows.
They might have to make good as
wives.
Tenderness is the mothers abb
for weakness in dealing with her
l children. When a woman INDUCES
her children in the things she knows
are harmful to them; when she lets
them grow up disobedient, self-wilI-
ed, absolutely without discipline or
control, she tries to palliate her
crime by saying that she loved them
80 much that she could not bring
herself to deny them anything they
wanted.
1.-THE mothers of murderers bring
forward this alibi for themselves:
~John always had a terrible temper,