The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-12

q know that all this is true, because I am one of the men who have been guilty of the old crime of swapping old wives for new, and know that 1t Is not the forsaken wife who pays. It is the weak and silly husband who pays and pays and pays as long as he lives.
 "Nor am the exception to the rule. Many men among my acquaintances have done the same thing, and l do not know a single one who has found any happiness in the new relationship. or who is as prosperous and successful as he was when the was jog-trotting along the straight and narrow road with the wife of his youth.
 "On the contrary, l have observed that most men begin to lose out when they pension off the old wife and put new on in her place. Whether it is because a mans mind is distracted | from his business by his new romance whether it is because the public loses confidence in the judgment of a man who has so little sense that he can be vamped by a pretty face; whether it is because people feel that they cannot trust the loyalty of man who has not been true to the most solemn obligation that any one can take upon themselves, or whether it is the punishment that fate metes out to the wrOng-doer, l do not know. But I do know that if the forsaken wife wants her revenge she gets it, good and plenty, in the fallen for tunes of her faithless husband.
 "As for happiness, we never find
 that along forbidden roads. No
 one can build a house of content
 ment if it's foundation stones are
 Had on the wreck of another's
 home. That is a bromide truth.
 It applies to all, but it especially
 applies to us poor dupes of men
 who befool ourselves il to thinking
 that we have a right to take what
 we want even at the price of
 woman's broken heart. iisN'
 "So we go our ruthless way, and
 follow our desires, and then very
 soon we wake up to the fact that we have made hideUus mistake.
 "We find out that what we thought was youth was just a little flareuT of Indian summer, and that we are old and cannot go the pace of youth, and that the amusements and pleasures o1 l
 youth bore us to death.
 We find out that what we thought was a great passion has died down tC a handful of ashes, and that we have nothing in common with the woman wt have chosen for life companion. AnC we find out that we are not loved fol ourselves, but for the things our money will buy. We have been taken in anC exploited by a baby face.
 Watch the middle-aged man
 who divorces his old wife. and
 marries a flapper, and you will see
 him suddenly slump. All the pep
 and vim will go oUt of him. He
 will become morose and silent.
 You will see him, dull and heavy
 eyed, sitting beside his wife in the
 theater, or paying the supper check
 at cabarets while his young wife
 dances with boys of her own age.
 The bitter knowledge of hs folly
 hasNcome to him and he turns cold,
 disillusiOned eyes on the girl who
 has flattered him and cajOled him,
 and played up her sex attraction on
 him until she stultified him into
 believing that he had ceased to care
 for his wife and loved her, and that T he was as young as she Was.
 And then he remembers with
 the desolatiOn of hell in his heart
 that he gave up for her the woman
 who had loved and married him when he was poor, who had work
 ed and sacrificed and helped build
 nm his fortunes and in whose arms