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Show I The Widow on Woman's Domesticity H I 701 cannot with horsos, with H Y flre with water, with argument, B reason, or with wide-open, star E ing fact get women away from their H ono essential prerogative the fcml- M nine characteristic of domesticity. B And domesticity does not mean, neces- B sarily, home. Far from it. Domestl- B city can mean just the unsentimental, fl unromantic sense of habit. A man B can get into a habit and go on sui- H fering in it, until it finally becomes B his actual necessity and contentment. B A woman will see her gods tumble all B about her on every side, her nouae H metaphorically burn to the ground, H and she will sit in the dead, white B ashes of it all and cry out ana ae- H mand the thing, the habit, that has H passed on or been left behind in als- B aster or in the natural changes, or In ' B the progress of living. Why is it? B It is mental laziness, the comfort, me B luxury, the selfishness of not want- B mg the condition she has accepted for mM herself uprooted. m H This condition may have h.ior. in B; the beginning a difficult one ror nor B to accept. There may have been at H) hand several other opportunities. If H it was some man standing there with B his importuning, there may have ucen H other men. Other men serve to H make the one man the more zealous H for favor the woman harder to win, H His arguments, his appeals, his love. H his determination finally mane mm B victor. She settles down with mm to B the one idea. Sho accepts the great H love for her, but remembers always B the pleading and the rivalry and never H awakens to any sacrifice or true ro- B turn In the love-giving. This accep- H tance and taking for granted that the B the same ardent love is hers to com- jB mand makes her blind to her own H sex rivals with which the most every- H day and most rare world is peopled. H Finally, one day she awaxens to H something in him that is slipping H away from her. She cannot believe, B but she feel3 the difference. She H makes the mistake of discussing the H situation. Perhaps the man nimselt H i has not been fully aware that his love JB has consumed itself. When dlsous- H sion comes he is bored, but he lies H manfully. What man on oartn can H tell a woman in so many words that H his love is dead! that very same B love that he hurled at her, with which H5 he fought for her, and which he wa Bh to go on building into the life-long H citadel, her fortress of life-long pro- K tection! It is quite impossible that a H man can acknowledge such fickleness. H He may gathor enough courage to H tell her that he has never received H from her any true friendship, or im- H selfish love, that he has grown weary H of giving out devotion at a shrine of H irresponsiveness, that he needs amuao H ment in the relaxation from business H worries, that the change she sees in L him is not change of heart, that H t that a lot of things, but never H uat his love is dead. A man cannot Br-t say "My love is dead," though woman can say so glibly, "I hate you: i nate you." Love and hate are such one-hearted one-hearted twins that "I hate you" from a man would to a woman mean as much as "I love you." This habit this domesticity will even make a woman forget all pride, all sel-respect. She will find her husband Interested in some other wo. man. At least sho suspects it and keeps at the suspicion, until at las, sho finds absolute proof of his unfaithfulness. un-faithfulness. There is only ono thing for a wife to do with this knowledge. She must pack her trunks, and get to another, an undefiled, atmosphere must she not? Otherwise, with her husband knowing that she knows of his slip from the moral path and then condoning it he places her, that supremely virtuous one, in the sam category with the other woman. Wltn her trunks and she off to her own pure atmosphere, the husbana can come begging for forgiveness, afcd, with his promises for the future straight and narrow path, she can after proper time and hesitancy step down gracefully from her pedestal pedes-tal to his level again and go back te her habit of being taken care of and with all self-respect. Even that baa husband, with her bad slip of letting him know she know, is sure to come begging if in her "habit" she has "made his home something where his physical physi-cal comforts were never forgotten. w But what of the woman wno snows and Btays on? Not only knows, Dnt every day, every hour, every minute, talks about, and tells the poor devil husband he has been discovered, when ho thought himself so clever in the gamo ho played and nloasuro he took. He not only loses his respect for her, but he feels like butting his own head against the wall because ho can no longer pose as the one perfect husband. hus-band. No longer can he tell her how treacherous and unfaithful are other husbands and how grateful she ought to be that she is so blessed. Sometimes Some-times in his humility at being discovered dis-covered ho accepts, permits the bullyragging bul-lyragging and works out his own problem, prob-lem, and sometimes it has been known to occur he takes the bull by the horns so to speak and tells her to "get out and get out quick!" And, though he is the criminal, she has to. go. Sho tells him for the sake of his 'child hor child she is willing to forgive. Not a bit of it. She has kept on all these years in her nagging, nag-ging, in hor solf-righteouBness, in her suspicions, in her spying, until sne has discovered something, that meant nothing particularly at least nothing else; it was bad enough God knows! when she lived and thrived only on her suspicions. Now that she has this indisputable proof it would be unbearable. unbear-able. So she goes. Sho spends time after this between climbing up on her pedestal as the saint who was willing to forgive, and the silent reflection that If she had it all to rrt over again sho would never let a husband know she knew no matter what he did. "Mental laziness" does not exactly explain the feminine characteristic. Vanity should be added. It is most difficult for a woman to believe that she has or can lose the love of a man after he has once convinced her that he really loves her. She may doubt this love in the beginning, and be very skeptical about herself being the one woman to whom such love can be given. giv-en. After she is once convinced the interest and love is really there, and for her, the conviction is for all time. She never realizes that, from the Instant In-stant of possession, it is her share in the union not to lose out. She was a mystery until possession came. Mystery Mys-tery must be replaced wltn something equally binding. Just being beautiful isn't enough. Just being a woman's own self is not enough. The power to hold must come through self-effacement and entering into the very spirit of the vital interests of the husband with no smallest peg of hindrance and even then she will have difficulty in keeping the love flame burning. That flame must die down into the steady, smouldering, under-the-cover spark that flames only once in a while, and then only enough to keep from dying out entirely. This smouldering smould-ering spark, however, makes a goou solid foundation for friendship if won't wo-n't n don't sto-p on i; end crush out the life. The Widow. |