The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-15

If the truth were known, mourn ing veils hide as many smiles as tears, and many a funeral simply means that wife or husband has won out in the endurance contest in miserable marriage.
 A professional fortune teller once told me that she always be- gan her seance by saying: T see the death of some one near you,
 and that in ninety cases out of a hundred, that individual whose fate she was revealing would im-
 mediately brighten up and begin to look optimistic.
 l thought at the time that that was the most brutally cynical thing
 that had ever heard; but, after l all, why should we not wish to be
 rid of the old man of the sea who
 rides upon our shoulders? Why should any one love us if we are not lovable? Why should any one
 desire us as companions unless we
 add to their happiness instead of
 being kill-joys?
 Mir. A is one of the men who, as the French proverb says, are 'the joy of the street and the sorrow of the home." Abroad, he is witty, enter taining and genial, the life of every company; chivalrous to women, open. handed and generous.
 At home, he is grOuchy and cross, mOrose and silent. He never speaks except to find fault. He vents on his wife and children the temper he dares not show to clients or customers. He never gives his wife a penny to spend as she pleases and she lives in terror of the first of the month when the bills come in.
 Do you not think that Mrs. A is glad when Mir. A dies? Do you think anything but a surging wave of joy comes over her when she realizes that she is free once more,
 that she has money to spend as she pleases, that never again will she have to listen to an insult or be afraid of any man?
 Mrs. B considers herself h paragon of wife, but she has the temper of a viragOl that she eamOuflages under the name of nerves, and she could break the worlds record as a nagger. For 25 years Mir. B has not been able to call his soul his own. He has been nothing but a down-trodden domestic slave who has gone in terror of doing or saying something that would precip- itate a scene. Finally, Mrs. B passes on.
 Would not Mir. B be more than human if his only emotion was not that of a prisoner set free? Is it not inevitable that his heart
 would sing with rapture when he realized that his jailor was gone, and that he would never again have to punch the timeclOck, or have to listen for the millionth time about
 some mistake he once made?
 Surely, it is more than a coin
 cidence that so many widows and
 widowers seem to regain their lost
 youth so soon after the demise of
 their late lamenteds.
 Mir. c is a rich old man, but stingy and hard. He says he believes in young people making their own way and not being hampered. He denied his chil- dren the luxuries he could well have afforded them. He refused to send the boys to college. He would not give the girls pretty clothes. iIe will not help the boys in their fight to get a start in the world. He sees his daughters, married to poor men, over worked with cooking and sewing and taking care of little children, but he withholds the money that would save their health and make them comfort able.
 When death looses the greedy clasp of fathers hand on his pock- etbook, why should any one ex- pect his children to regret it? He
 has made their lives hard when