The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-01-05
The Real Secret Of Unhappy
 Marriages
Dorothy Die
The Wedding Ring Isn't Fairy Ring That Performs Mira cles-Our Tastes And Characters Are Just The Same After The Ceremony As Before-So Don't Depend On White Magic To Make Your Marriage A Success

The most baleful superstition in the world ois the belief that there IS some con5ure in the marriage cere- mony that changes the whole nature Of the man and woman participants.
 People, otherwise intelligent, go with the trusting faith of fanatic to the altar. confident that there is some magic in the words that a priest or preacher will mutter over them that will turn them into diff ferent individuals from the ones they are. and after their every taste. habit and ideal.
 That is the real secret of why there are so many unhappy mar riages. The miracle fails to come off.
 A man Is taken by the pretty face of girl whom he knows to be utterly unsuited to be his wife. But he goes along and marries her in the fond belief that all you have got to do to q woman is to dress her up in white satin and orange b1os- some and parade her up the church aisle to the tune of the Mendelssohn march and she will come down again endowed with every feminine and domestic virtue.
 A girl falls in love with a disso- lute rogue. She knows that to marry him is to bring almost certain misery upon her. But does she hesitate to risk her happiness on so desperate a chance? She does not, because she honestly believes that there is some mysterious power in getting married that metamorphosizes g rounder into a staid and moral citizen and turns a spender and a waster into thrifty worker.
 We smile when we tell the chill dren fairy tales about the wishing ring that one had only to put on ones finger to get what one desired. Yet we grownups believe implicitly that the wedding ring Is a wishing ring that will work white magic for us.
 We are mortified at the ignorance of the heather who think that the priests can drive out devils and cure those who are sick by the making of & few passes above them, and little hokus-pokus. Yet we cling to the superstition that the nsrriage ceremony will cure a virago, of her temper or brute of his cruelty. and heal the lazy and the shiftless of their tnfirmities.
 This alone explains the inexplicable marriage that people make.
 A man who is 8 cultivated student will marry 8 silly little girl who hasn't two ideas in her head to rub together. In the days of courtship the measure of her brainlessness and find out that when he talked, to her of books that he spoke of an unex- plored world to her, and that when he discussed. the things in which he was Interested she yawnedi in his face. Nor could he help perceiying that her chatter was the chatter of ornfa tVn fa1, she delighted were things that bored him stiff.
 His common sense shrfeked to him that marriage hetweene two neople who had not one Single idea, nor an ideal, nor thought, nor desire, in common was bound to be a failure. But the man, wise and sophisticated to his superstitious belief in the potency of the marriage ceremony, refused to heed the warning.
 Somehow, he was confident that just getting married would change a silly, ignorant girl into an intel lectual woman who would be fit companion to him; miraculously make ore who had never even read a sixth best seller familiar with the worlds best literature, and make her pre- fer to discuss world topics to gossip about the people next door.
 We wonder why poor men marry fashion plates; why men who love to eat marry girls who loathe the Kitchen; why quiet, domestic men marry girls who live to dance and go to cabarets. They are all poor, blind heather, trusting in the mar riage ceremony to make an extrava- gant girl economical, a frivolous girl serious, an undomestic girl domestic.
 Not only do we superstitiously be- lieve in the power of the marriage ceremony to change other people. We actually think it will change our selves.
 The philanderer believes that he