Perth Amboy evening news., 1923-05-28
THAI TRELLIS BACK HOME

Do YOU too thrill at the prospect of a visit back home9
DO you too, after you have Rugged your little mother, and your
aseverdad, start on a journey all
around the house, to assure yourself that the same beloved old
chairs and pictures and rugs are still there with all their mem
cries to make your homecoming complete? Funny, isn't 1t, how
none of your own new and beautiful household gods can be-
gin to be half SO dear as that shabby old chair where you used
to read "Quo Vadis' when you ought to have been doing
your geometry! Or that old green baize-coverea desk where
your brother has his ~feverishly collected batch of wild flowers
spread out to put in his herbarium the night before the books
were called in. How he worked and how valantly mother
stood by him, helping him along when he got sleepy and irri-
tated, so that he shouldn't fail in Botany! Yes, the especially
dear old furniture-friends are still there, and when you are
satisfied as to that, then you can be persuaded to 60 out and
look at all mothers fine tulips and dafodis, just from hol-
land, and the newly acquired shrubs.
You are shown a surprise that has delighted father and
mother, because of it's bid to moralizing. The wistaria has up
rooted its trellisl There it is, pushed a foot or two out of the
ground and above the porch roof.
Mother looks at father, and says syly, The cllnging
vine, you see. That's what it does. Clutches so hard, with all
its strength, at its support, that 1t dlslodges the support
Overcomes it. There's a moral"
I have to laugh Just a little. Mother was never a cling
ing vine. Perhaps she thought I was, I don't know. Anyway,
much as 1 despise the clinging vine type OF woman because
it is so grasping, demanding everything and giving nothing,
I think there is something to be said for the chnglng VINE.
Lots of women who are clinging vines wouldn't have been
if their husbands hadn't started them out with too much deVo-
tion. Too much devotion makes a woman too SOFT ana 100 e1-
pectant Of more, and always dependent. We all thrive better
on a little neglect. We DON want life to be made 100 easy Tor
us. We don't want to get soft or petulant. Ii we do, we
end by being discontinued, and we vent our disgruntledness on
our devoted men, railing at them because 'this is a mans
world, - or because women have all the burdens ana none Oh
the fun" etc. ad nauseam.
There are plenty of instances, unfortunately, where WON,
en- have all the burdens and none Of the fun; but have still
to find a disconnected, disgruntled wife, whose husband isn't
the most devoted husband that one could wish. The answer is,
that the wife is spoiled. If her blunt relatives tell her that
she's spoiled, she regards it as a tribute to her powerl Be-
cause Of course flattery is her staple food.
Either of two things is likely to happen IN the case OF the
clinging vine and the t~relis,-either the trelis loses Its power
to 4 function as a trellis, and is uprooted, Completely dominated
by the clinging vine), or its breaks entirely, and is forever
free from the strangling clutch. p,
I don't like the trelhs and-vine conception OF marriage. Id
hate to be either treuis or vine. l like so much more the So
called modern conception of the status of men and women
as equals. 1t certainly makes much more satisfactory mar
riages. A women should stand up to life as stoutly as a man
should. She should acknowledge her responsibilities and
meet them herself. I'd greatly prefer to be a tree, standing
erect and unafraid, than to be the loyeliest chnglng vine tnt
ever covered a trells.
There's a nobility, a dignity, a personality, about a tree.
It is gloriously independent. But the clnging vine, no matter
how beautiful it is to look at, has a kind OF kinshlp with the
boa constructor. rh.+
The generation that is coming on is Independent: mat
is why Il is so splendid. "Cast off the shackles OF victorian
pretense. be honest, live your life Independently VI! That IS the
slogan. as I see the rising generation. Fine, ISM 1T
We who were born under the Victorian standards may De
dazed or even startled a bit, but passionately we want you
Youngsters to carry your brave banner forward. Its spirit
is MAGNIFICENT.