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Show Howe About: Women Wives Good Behavior . Bell Syndicate WNU Service. By ED HOWE "TV IE roving correspondent of the J- Kansas City Star once called on me and said : "The women all say you are a woman hater. How about it?" . ... I said 1 wasn't, and that all the women didn't say so. In support of this statement, I gave him a letter from a woman in Texas, but he made no reference to it in tlie two columns he wrote about me. Tlie woman said; "I am barely nineteen, and have a deformed body. I am familiar with you through ( the Kansas City Star, and I want to give the devil his due, for you are the writer who has done me most good. Being a cripple, I have a wicked and fast temper, but you have taught' me to control it for my own benefit. Your constant teaching that one should behave be-have for one's own sake, as a matter of profit, because it is finally the easiest und best way, I have been able to understand and practice with more success than any other." Early man had a strong disposition to whip his wife, and often did. I have seen a picture in an old book of an angry husband entering the house carrying a switch, and of his wife cringing and begging for mercy, as I did as a child in tlie presence of an angry father. (In this old picture, also, is the figure of a woman evidently evident-ly the wife's mother, who begged for mercy, too, as my mother begged for mercy for me). Wives have taken the switch from the hands of brutal husbands. Men have granted equal rights, but the women are still screaming as though regularly whipped. Men of today submit sub-mit to the gross absurdity of police women, stateswomen, but the women are as busy as ever In telling of wrongs long since remedied. As far back as the time of Silerius women insisted on rights that were actually wrongs. Silerius in his memoirs tells of one of his wives going go-ing bare-legged, although she was of considerable age, and it didn't look well. Silerius objected to the custom. Any reproof of women today sets them screaming as though the reproof were a beating. Men of the present generation are the heirs of the experience of men of an older time. Thus we have learned of the greater convenience of obtaining obtain-ing water by turning a top, instead of a more troublesome journey to a spring. The modern bank, hotel, railroad rail-road and school are merely cogs in the wheel of civilization as it goes round endlessly, and is slowly improved because of the disposition of men to seek greater conveniences. A clean, dependable man Is a development of good behavior, as is a useful machine or system lightening our labors and our worries. If I should marry again (1 have about as much notion of it as of being born again) I think I should relieve my friends of the bother of a public ceremony. In our extravagant and wasteful American way, marrying has become more troublesome than a fire. The bride is worn out, the father bankrupt, and all those who read the prenuptial notices in the newspapers are disgusted. There Is also the trouble of attendance on the ceremony and reception, to say nothing of presents. pres-ents. Men especially do not wish to attend or buy, and for days previously are glowered at by wives who know they are trying to get out of it; for wives love weddings. Why would it not be a good idea to give half the present amount wasted on weddings to starving old soldiers, the poor, union labor organizations, railroads and bankers in distress. It would be a great convenience to me if some of the army of writers now useless would devote their time to reading, and print collections of the occasional good things found in novels essays, histories and the mass of writing writ-ing of every kind. I thank Jauies Truslow Adams for a sentiment he lately buried in a book, and which I happened to encounter: "The wisdom of the past," he says, "is not to be undone in the present by a few telephones, tele-phones, motor cars or radios." The first writing was on clay tablets, tab-lets, or on paper laboriously made from marsh plants, and there was far too little of it. In these days of paper easily made by tons from wood pulp. ! and of typewriters, stenographers. I movable type and printing presses. there is far too much of It. The old- j time men soon settled their differences by resort to fists, battle axes, lances, rocks or spears; there was at least occasional oc-casional peace, but owing to the ease of writing the differences of modern men are never settled. Every one is entitled to weak moments. mo-ments. I do not greatly criticize them in friends who have treated me as well as I treat them. A woman who seems to be somewhat elderly writes me: "Frequently you give me hard rubs, and I know they are deserved: Being a woman, I know a woman can be the most unreasonable un-reasonable thing under the sun: I know, because I've been guilty: One has to get near the jumping off place before being able to exercise that much candor |