Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-12-16
DOROTHY DIX DISCUSSES LIFE
TALKS ON HEART AND HOME

Answer-You have my heartiest
sympathy, 3. A. T. ] know of few
things more affecting than to have
a humorist in the family who finds
delight in holding up the weaknesses
Of others to sCorn and exhibiting
them as figures of fun to be Knocked
at by others.
1t always seems to me that man
who will tease his. wife until she
Weeps is twin brother to the Grand
Inquisitor who used the thumb
screws on his victims until they
cried for mercy, and that he has
much in common with those fun-lov-
ing old emperors who flayed people
alive and whose idea of having a real
good time was to see somebody torn
limb from limb. For the spirit that
animates a teaser is sheer cruelty
that delights in beholding the suffer
in9s of others.
The real comeback of a practical
joke should be with a loaded club
But, unfortunately, few women are
fitted either tempermanetally or
physically to hand their husbands
this convincing bit Of repartee when
they are made the butt of hubby's
choicest dinner-table story. There
fore, all you can do is just to writhe
and endure your husbands witt
cisms with what patience you can.
AS for growing a funny bone,
that's an impossibility. A sense OF
humor is a gift of the gods 1T is
nothing we can make for ourselves.
However, you needn't conclude that
you are deficient in humor because
you do not enjoy being ridiculed.
Few of us enjoy the laugh when it is
at our own expense.
The only way you can stop your
husband from teasing you is to pre-
tend not to care. There is no fun in
teasing n person who isn't leased,
just as there would be no sport in
sticking pins in a rag doll. 1t is the
sticking of the pins into the live,
quiVering flesh that flinches from
the pain that gives Zest to the cruel
sport. When you learn to control
your temper, and keep back your
tears, and treat your husbands teas
ing, with stOlid indifference he will
stop, for he will have no further
pleasure in it when it ceases to hurt
you.
Dear Miss Dix am a married
woman, twenty years old, with a
year and a half-old baby. MY hus-
band and [ get along splendidly eX.
cept about one thing. [ am very
fond of good times and am crazy
about dancing. My one enjoyment is
to be on a dance floor, but my hus-
band is very much opposed to dane
ing. He will not take me to q dance
and does not like me to go with 9th
ers, even his own sisters; and when
l do go, anyway, he goes out and
gets drunk. [ do not like him to get
intoxicated, but I think he ought not
to expect me to settle down at my
age. TROUBLED WIFE.
Answer should think, my dear,
that you We're paying a pretty high
price for your dancing if it cost you
a drunken husband. and that you
would be glad enough to exchange a
little shimmying for surcease from
bootlegger liquor.
The thing for you and your .hus-
band to do is to effect a compromise
whereby YOU agree to give up dane
ing II he Will give up drinking.
Can't YOU see that you are risking
your whole Iife's happiness, your
home. your husband, your own well
fare and your child's for the sake of
jigging around on floor to the tune
of a few coWbels and horns? How
tragic that so much could so for so
little,
Remember that, even if YOU are
young, YOU have taken upon your
self the responsibility OF life. You
have taken the happiness and we'll
being of man and a child in your
hands, and YOU have no right to
think Of your pleasure before their
good.
That's the pity of too early mar
riages. A girl still wants the pleas
ures of girlhood when she should be
thinking of her duties as wife and
mother. DOROTHY DIX.