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Show ;! Dorothy Dix Says "W1 ; The wonder is not that married people spat, but that the!; M melting pot of matrimony turns out as good a product as ;! m it does. W j By DOROTHY DIX, The World's Highest Paid Woman Writer j 3R s "People often wonder," said the f -woman in gray, "why so many marrk-d jB : couples who really love each other and j9 try to do their duty get along so in- w harmoniously togethor, and particular- jfl ly why in-laws may always fight like 9 cats and dogs. fl "I think that the wonder is all the B ' other way about, and that the amazing H r thmg is that a man and voman, com- jM ing of different ideas and tastes, ad- fl just themselves to each other as well jM as they do in the close confines of jm ; matrimony. And it's a marvel that 9 ' any woman can' ever come Into an- 9 other family without causing friction. 9 "It's one of nature's grim' little jokes 9 ) that, while our opposites attract us 9 : before marriage, our opposites repel us 9 after marriage. We fall in love with 9 : a man or woman because he or she is 9 :( entirely different from the kind of peo- 9 ' Ple whm w'e are accustomed, but 9 after we are married this very differ- 9 cnce irritates us and gets on our m nerves. And it makes us persona non - grata, as the diplomats say, to our m- "lt might not make for the good HE of tne race for eacl1 oC us t0 marrv our mm double, so to speak, but it certainly HM would make for peace and happiness U in ihe domestic circle. Also, it would Rw stop divorce and make matrimony one Ijl glad, sweet song, for, after all, the it PePG we really enjoy are not those III with whom we are in a perpetual ar- Hf gument, but those who think as we do Ir from politics to pie, and who look at Iv life from the same point of vIew that IB. Ave do- "But we don't marry our likes. When II a. young fellow goes to pick out a wife, II instead of selecting a girl of his own IB circle, he hunts around and finds one II who differs in every respect from his B mother and sisters, who really repre- B sent his ideal of womanhood, and he Bl marries this outlander, plumps her II down among his own folks and expects Bl them to fall on each other's necks and Bl for everybody to be happy and conge- I "Is it surprising that a man and a II woman who see everything in the B world from a different angle clash? Or Bl that women of different families, with Bl different ideas on every subject under II the sun, when suddenly thrown into B the Intimacy of family life, jar on each K other? The wonder to me is that the Iff melting pot of matrimony turns out as good a product as it does. K "Take my own case, for instance. I l come of a reserved New England fam-WRf' fam-WRf' ily, where individuality and personal III liberty amounted almost to a fetish. From the time I can remember I had H my own room, my own desk, my own IB clothes, my own books, my own bell be-ll longings. IB, "My privacy was sacred. My mother 9 would no more have thought of open- 9 hig one of my letters or rummaging 9 through my desk than she would have 9 taken such liberties with the president 9 of the United States. Nor did she 9 ever catechise me about where I went 9 or what I did. She welcomed my con- 9 fidences, but she would have thought it beneath her dignity and mine to try to find out anything that I did not voluntarily tell her. "Well, along comes John, a young Lochinvar out of the west, big, hearty, expansive, with not a single reserve in his whole makeup. Of course, we fell in love with each other because wo were the different poles of humanity, and we were married and went west to live among his people. "His sisters received me with "open arras, and, what was to me a shocking and vulgar curiosity. They asked me a million intimate questions that made me feel thnt I was being put through a third degree, but which I now know was inspired by only a friendly and affectionately af-fectionately interest in me. They pawed over my trousseau and tried on my hats and gowns and even borrowed such of my finery as suited their taste. "I cannot tell you with what repulsion repul-sion this filled me. It made them seem savages to me, and I mortally offended them by giving them the things that they had worn, because I could no more have put on a garment that had touched 'somebody else's flesh than I could have used another person's tooth brush. "At first my in-laws were just bewildered. be-wildered. Then they became indignant and to this day they dislike me and think me stuck up and proud, when there's nothing the matter with either of us except that we were just raised so differently. "And my experience with my husband hus-band came near to being a tragedy. Never shall I forget the morning I came into breakfast and found' that he had opened one of my letters and was reading It. I flamed into a sudden sud-den passion at what 1 considered the indignity, and we had a scene that loft scars that ache to this day. I felt that my rights as an Individual were being be-ing outraged. He felt that a wife had no individuality aside from her husband. hus-band. "But there are things that my mother moth-er and sisters write me that are not intended for anyone but me, to know. " 'I'd tell you anything about mine,' he replied. " 'You shouldn't tell me.' I protested. "But ho couldn't understand, and for many years the letter proposition was a sore subject between us. "John and his family were also the kind of people that talk things over endlessly before and after they do them. They tell all their plans, their hopes, their ambitions, to anyone who will listen. To me this has always reemed the weakest kind of babble. I simply can't do it, and because I don't proclaim from the housetops what I intend doing they consider me secretive secre-tive and look upon me with an eye of suspicion. "All the trouble there has ever been between John and myself and between me and his family goes right straight back to the; way we wore brought-up, and the difference in our temperaments, tempera-ments, and that's whnt makes me say that it's a pity that nature is guilty of such a blunder as the attraction of opposites." |