Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-01-30
DOROTHY DIX
DISCUSSES
LIFE
BY DOROTHY DIX
Real HeID to Her Husband.

- - bride the other day. IT
to be a real helpmeet," she went on.
II want to boost, and not pull down,
but l don't even know how to be-
gin. 1 have no money, and 1 am
not one of those gifted, inspirational
women who, in novels, are always
getting their husbands wonderful
jobs, or opening marvellous doors of
opportunity to them. So what can
I do to help my MANI
Well, my dear, the way to help
husband depends upon what the hus-
band needs. Some men can best he
helped with a goad, while others re-
spond to the treatment of wife
who knows now to administer copl-
Gus doses of soothing syrup; SO
study your patient, and try to find
out what sort of tonic he requires.
Just be sure of one thing, and that
is that every husband needs all the
help his wife can give him, and
that nine times out of ten, whether
a man fails or achieves, success de-
ponds upon his wife.
But to different men, different
methods.
know a man who, up to the time
he was forty-flVe years old, was d
miserable parasite who let his mothre
and sisters works and support him.
He was a big, husky chap, but to
save his face among their friends,
and, perhaps, even to hide his weak
ness from themselves, these delicate
and refined ladies invented a fiction
of poor health which they cast
like the mantle of charity over his
idleneSS.
Finally, Weary Willie fell in love
and married a cOarSe-fibered woman
with red hair. She didn't have any
of the ladylike reserve that kept
her from calling d lazy loafer by his
right name. The thing his mother
and sisters couldn't do to him, she
did without gloves. She made him
go to work, and stay at work, and
turned him into an Industrious and
prosperous man.
And l know another man, a bril-
liant, World-famous man, who is mar
ried to a woman who is a human
mush poultice, yet her husband
claims that he owes all of his sue
cess to her. Nothing ever disturbs
her calm, or upsets her poise, and
when her husband comes home over
worked with nerves shot to pieces
and so irritable and unreasonable
that he snaps and snarls at every
one who speaks to him, and RACES
around the house like lunatic
she doesn't get her feelings hurt, o.
grow angry herself, or tell him that
he might act like a reasonable man,
and not Ike a mad beast.
She just pats him on the back as
she would a fractions child, and says,
There, there, now" and enfolds
him in her infinite calm until he is
rested and quoted and able to go on
with his work.
Some women help their husbands
by sacrificing themselves to their
husbands career.
A public man whose wife demands
that he think of her first never gets
very far. The women who drag
their husbands around to parties at
night and who raise ructiOnS when
their husbands have to give the time
and attention to their business that
they think belongs to them will new
err see themselves in the millionaire
class.
The wife of a great criminal law
yer told me once that when her hus-
band was trying a big case that she
cooked every particle of food that
he ate with her own hands, so that
he might have the most nourishing
and digestible food that it was pos
sible to give him, and that she
never even spoke to him unles he
addressed her first, for fear that she
might interrupt some important train
of thought that was going on in his
mind. That woman has helped her
husband to success because she has
left him free to give every bit Of
ability that is in him to his work,
and because she makes ideal work
ing conditions for him.
A wife can help her husband by
making friends for him. I knew a
rarely gifted surgeon who has never
been able to build up a practice be
cause of his wife's jealousy. Every
time he gets a fOothOld in com
munity she starts an ungrounded
scandal about his being in love with