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Show . ALWAYS A WOMAN'S FAULT. There is nothing on earth that makes one more provoked than the tendency of some persons to lay the blame for every misfortune that occurs to a man on the shoulders of his poor w ife, who has no possible means of retaliation, but must just simply bear the odium that does not rightfully rest upon her. There is another phase of this question equally prone to arouse my indignation, indigna-tion, and that is when persons assert that no man would dare to speak to a woman on the street unless he received some encouragement from her. This is all nonsense. I know at least a dozen pretty modest young women who have never even so much as looked at a man they did not know who have been addressed in the most familiar fashion by some well dressed loafer who thought his personal charms so great that he could with ease break down the barriers of conventionality .and good breeding and be forgiven by the feminine object of his admiration. That many such have received the punishment they deserved goes without with-out saying, but many more are merely ignored. The girl is too refined to create cre-ate a scene, and thus when he has received re-ceived only a silent snub, hardly noticeable no-ticeable by the passersby, he goes on his way to tackle another one who has not encouraged him a whit more than the first, despite all masculine assertions asser-tions to the contrary. Men can fail men do fail in business busi-ness without having their failure caused by their wives' extravagance. Men do drink without being driven to it by the coquetries of their wives with other men or an absence of congeniality congenial-ity in their homes, and men do speak to women on the street without being in the least bit encouraged so to do. They take a chance, and it is a pity that they are let down so easily when that chance is not in their favor. But even if they were caught in the very commission of their act. of effrontery they would probably brazen it out and " lay the blame on the innocent woman. ', Ever since the day when Adam, the , coward, wiggled out of the responsi- , bility for his misdoing by saying, "The woman tempted me, and I did , eat," men have been inventing lame excuses for their failings and are glad ' enough to saddle the blame on the opposite op-posite sex, though they know in their hearts they are taking refuge in the 1 most palpable subterfuges that deceive 1 very few women at least, whatever ' they make men believe on the sub- 1 ject. v . |