The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1923-05-13
For Better and Worse
(By Maverick and R. Marshall Terrell.)

viz VI tuc dUHOIudltlcS OIL lie IS The
fact that those who love best quarrel
best. The climax is often divorce
The cause is perhaps an excess, surfeit Of
love, as we'll as ultimate hate.
It was so with the John Henry Wheelers
They were both still young, they had only
been married seven years. But out in
Laurelhurst they had lived entirely too much
together. Some husbands with their bread
earning in the city, clear out for the day
and the wife has plenty of time to come
back to her ante-marriage illusions before
her man returns to be fed in the evening.
But John Henry was a writer of adver.
Using. He was a genius at conjuring up
those pat little phrases that make one not
only look twice at national advertisements.
but, more important, remember them.
Wheeler did his best work at home, in his
tiny study. He went to the city only to
sell his wares. He needed concentration to
work. He got it, too much-with his wife.
They rubbed elbows entirely too much every
day and all day.
So, this quarrel was the elimination. The
cause, the bone of contention, was trifle
as it generally is, the straw that breaks the
camePs back 1t was midnight when John
Henry got out Of the marital bed, dressed to
the accompaniment of Mrs. Wheeler
tongue-and his own-and left the house in
furious rage. He was in time to catch the
midnight flyer to town.
True to his threat, John Henry's lawyer
looked up his wife's lawyer the next day
and, John Henry and Janet being too proud,
too hurt and too stupid to back out, an ac-
tual divorce in course of time ensued.
Wheeler insisted upon making ample provis-
ion for his ex-wife's support and once freed
moved to the city, to his club, while Janet.
now the Laurelhurst home was sold went
back to her mothers, out west-in Chicago.
1t seems they couldn't get too far apart.
A year passed by. Excellent time for the
cooling of heels and, presumably, hearts.
Old habits are hard to evade. John Henry
tasted the fruits of bacheorhood and in
time found the taste unpleasant. He con-
tented himself by taking out his disgust and
lonesomeness in a sardonic, ironcal philoso-
ply which he distributed so freely about his
club that soon he was left alone. Flirta-
tions, madnesses, theatres, dances, poker
bouts and other male-dog frivolities having
gone by the board with the barky cynicism,
there was nothing left but ingrowing
Crouch.
The pendulum swings back. A whole
year had passed. 1t had been spring when
they separated, it was spring now, that
metamorphc period when emotions sway us
most. This time the good in John Henry
began to take seed and sprout in his heart.
For two pins he would have written out west
but, such is abominable pride, he didn't. He
took his revenge out in reading daily the
personals in the Herald and sneering.
Derision grew to interest and that to
hope. Then one day-he read what he had
long been looking for, a personal so worded
that it mirrored his lonely heart. There was
a lack of mush to it, lack of sophistication,
of metropolitan bait and dare. Of course,
it was absurd, he of all men, but John
Henry answered it, anonymously, leaving
loopholes to retire, if the thing was the usual
trap.
1t was answered in the same vein, eau
tiously, anonymously, near-sincerely. John
Henry tempted, fell Almost. He wrote
again to the serial number but he didn't
sign his name. She answered. Other let
tiers followed.
They revealed similarities of tempera-
ment and tastes, there were chapters in the
lives of each that read much the same; both
had been married, cat-and-dog existence,
both had been divorced, both were lonely
birds without nest, neither had met the
perfect mate, neither hsl gwen mp hope.