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Show ALAS FOR THE STRONGER SEX According to statistics long kept by the Metropolitan Life Insurance In-surance Company, three men commit suicide to every woman vho indulges in self destruction. What are we to infer from that? It miht be easy to ask whether the majority of the men who kill themselves them-selves are married and build up some theory of the husband being nagged to death, to serve as a justification for confirmed bachelors, or an explanation of the existence of so many "old maids" on the idea that they are single because "Nobody asked me, sir, she said," the reason for not asking being a masculine fear of domestic infelicity. But our observation leads us to discard the postulation as inaccurate. We might also build up a theory that the cares of business and the responsibilities of family support are so much more wearing upon the male mind than upon the female, that he naturally "goes west" voluntarily three times as often as she does, but that also is likely to be a bachelor theory. One who has observed through a series of years the cares, anxieties, and distractions of the mother of a large family, and the wife of a fretful, thoughtless or indifferent husband, has grave doubts about the preponderance of suicide incitations on the male side of the house. These two theories out of the way, we are left nothing else but a comparison of the mental qualities of the two sexes as they have relation to this matter of self-destruction. Any physician will tell you that the average womans bears pain and suffering better than the average man. Any minister will tell you that woman bears up under blows that threaten the family better than the average man. Any judge of a court of domestic relations will tell you that it is generally the wife who provides the new hope, the new courage, the new determination to "carry on" when financial and other disaster overtakes the family. Alas for the stronger sex. He is stronger only in a physical sense, and in this athletic age is in danger of losing los-ing even that point of advantage. |