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Show KATHLEEN NORMS Don't Look for the Dull Facet wrong. Rhody reads every word you write, and if you could jack her up a little on these things, it would make my life a little simpler." Priceless Diamond Chester, my dear, you are not wrong; there is no question of right or wrong here. But you are a man who holds a priceless diamond in his hand and turns and twists it to see if one of the facets is not a little lit-tle out of line. The brilliance of your diamond ought to blind you to any such defect, , and I believe that if you could truly appreicate the woman you have in Rhody, it would. Here Is a girl who makes babies love her in school, and when their mother died, carried that love right into their lives as a new mother. She gallantly went on teaching for awhile, presumably to help you out financially, and stopped when the care of the elderly invalid, a home, a man, and an increasing number of babies interrupted her own career, ca-reer, or rather, replaced it with a higher career. She has given you four sons; she nursed your mother in the last hard months of an illness. She handles a job that would put some women into a psychopathic ward, and evidently she enjoys every moment of it. Six small children, chil-dren, and your Rhoda has spirit enough to get up picnics, to plant vegetables, to drag even the baby off to distant lovely places to enjoy en-joy an outdoor meal! As for the bread pudding for breakfast, has it ever occurred to you that when you eat two pieces of raisin-bread toast, coffee with cream, two boiled eggs, butter and sugar for your breakfast, you'v eaten a bread pudding? "TSN'T THERE any guidebook for wives, isn't there any school course that they ought to take?" demands a husband from Trenton, N. J. "I've got the darndest sweet wife any man ever had," his letter goes on, "and I love her. But Rhody has about as much idea of system, order, management, budgeting, as a white bunny, and if I talk about such things her eyes go vague, and she looks rather distressed, and in five minutes she's forgotten all about it. "We have six children, two girls who are mine by my first wife, who died when they were mere babies; four boys, now 8, 6, 3 and one year old, born to Rhoda and me. When we were first married, 10 years ago, my mother lived with us, and managed everything, as Rhody was still teaching. After this, Mother was invalided for two years by a stroke, and the babies began to arrive and Rhody stayed home. "I know that though she was devoted de-voted to Rhoda, Mother must have suffered through the disorder and the slipshod ways of our household, house-hold, baby garments everywhere, no regular hours for naps or meals, and Rhoda as apt to give us a bread pudding for breakfast and oatmeal and bacon for dinner if the fancy struck her, or pick up the children and telephone me to meet them on some distant beach or mountain road for a picnic supper. Feels Disloyal "Writing this much," the husband hus-band continues, "I feel disloyal f.or as I began by saying, I have1 a darned sweet wife, and Rhody is a fine cook as well. She never wastes anything and she can make a good meal out of an ice box full of scraps that look like nothing plus, to me. My little girls have never had to realize their own mother's loss, for Rhoda was their kinder- 4$ flf ". . . fine cook as well . . " garten teacher when my first wife died, and they adored her then and they do now. "I honestly have nothing to complain com-plain of, but although I hear other fellows at the office talking of insurance in-surance and buying bonds, and see other women's houses neat and well-organized, I come home to racket and confusion, find Rhody and the children digging vegetable gardens at six in the evening, and the baby with them in his disreputable disrepu-table basket. And sometimes I wonder won-der if there mightn't be a school, or a course in girls' schools, that would teach them something about just the simplest sort of housekeeping. housekeep-ing. It must be simple, because so many women do keep reasonably orderly homes. "Now don't rip into me," Chester Heyman disarmingly concludes hit letter, "for I feel like a prude and a sissy, when I heckle my good wife about children's dirty hands at meals and comment on the state of the window curtains. Having so much, perhaps I'm exacting to want more, but Is it so hard for a woman to observe just the ordinary routine of housekeeping? Tell me if I'm |