The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1940-09-19

when the infatuation is over, blandly
forget and forgive and 60 on as if
nothing had happened? Where is
my dignity, where is that future
toward which all women want to
build, a future of security and peace,
with children growing up, and gar
den, home, friendships, trips, vaca-
tons all shared with a real COM
panion? And is it my fault that Dan
has no desire to plan for such fu-
ture, but pays me attention only
when he is not interested in some
one else?
A Five Year Plan.
''My own idea is that all mar
riages ought automatically to be
cancelled at about five years, at
which time the man and woman
should be forced to live apart for
six months or so, to see how each
feels about resuming the relation
ship. 1t is frightful to feel that the
step you took confidently in girlhood
is holding you in prison for life."
That is only part of the letter, but
sufficient to show that Mary is one
of the great class of wives who feel
a childish despair upon discovering
that husbands are just human be-
ings after all, selfish and stupid and
subject to fattery and apt to get
bored with home ties of wife, chill
dren, familiar dinner table, domes-
tic routine.
Stigma of Divorce Removed.
Truly today's husband is a little
more trying along these lines than
his father was, because of social
changes in the last SO years. With
divorce so common an escape, mar
riage has indeed come to be some
thing of what Mary hints, at least to
those whose religious scruples do
not prohibit divorce. Many a
marriage breaks up in it's fourth,
or fifth, or seventh year, and many
state laws insist upon a period
during which the couple, who seek
divorce, may have chance to think
things over in cool blood. Fifty
years ago a husband had to stand
by his wife, and a wife by her home
and children, for divorce carries a
bitter stigma, and few women could
become self-supporting. These re-
Strictions are swept away now, an
enormous percentage of the names
in the Social Register are those OF
divorced men and women, and what
the Social Register does the less
prominent circles think it right to do.
So that the f1irtatious detached
woman your husband meets in his
business may well feel that she is
free to win him and hold him.
Cure Same Today as Yesterday.
There were abuses and difficult
ties and domestic martyrs in the
old days, of course. But also there
was stability, there was security,
and both those things are very valu-
able. The disappointed wife turned
her spurned affections to other
things, she grew all the stronger
and more self-reliant as she aban-
doned the futile chase toward chap
piness," and learned to make other
people happy instead of herself.
And even today in her home and
garden and kitchen, with her books,
pets, children, friendships, with the
letter-writing that was so remark
able a feature of a woman's life a
hundred years ago, and today with
movies, motor trips, radio, with all
the worlds best music boxed for
her convenience and with small
neighbors needing mothering, any
woman can form for herself a life
of beauty and use and content, in
side of the jail that she calls mar
rage, more easily than outside it.
To be eternally thinking and talk
ing of your happiness" and of
what other persons, husbands, moth
er-in-law, neighbors can do to de-
stroy it, is to put real happiness
completely out of reach. Try DELHI
erately facing unhappiness instead !;
with courage, patience, humility, all
the difficult old Christian virtues.
Get busy with something, and never
stop to think what you yourself are
feeling. 1t may not change him, it
probably won't. But you'll be changed
into real woman, taking your share
of the burden of this laundering, UNI
happy old world.