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Show I Dorothy Dix Talks-, I ; j MONEY AND MATRIMONIAL HAPPINESS I.., By DOROTHY DIX. The World's Highest Paid Woman Witter I :' The other day a divorce was granted grant-ed to the middle aged wife of a man f who has made a large fortune in the last few years. f In her testimony the wife said: : i "Judge, I love my husband, and he is a good man in spite of the way he I lias treated, me. It's money that has bi t ruined him. ' Ours was just a poor boy and girl marriage, I used to get up at I four o'clock in the morning to got him : a good hot breakfast before he started i off to work, and I staid up at. night washing his shirt and pressing his clothes so he would look neat and I 1 cleap. He loved me then, and wo w were as happy together as we could i. "But he made money and the people .1 who never noticed him when he was Iff poor began to flatter him, and hang f about him, and then he got rich, and 1 pretty young girls with painted faces made eyes at him, and they took him ft away from me. ff "It's money that's broken up our ft home and ruined my husband' and I m pray to God every night that he will 9 lose it, for then he'll come back to If me." LI Perhaps this story Is not as uncom- I mon as we think. Perhaps the for- W tune that all of us are striving for Is oftener a boomerang than we know, 1 and brings misery as frequently as it m does happiness. Perhaps more people I are ruined by prosperity than by mis- 11 fortune, for the real test of character I Is not in meeting poverty bravely but ft in bearing riches with equanimity. Many a man is saved from being a drunkard by lacking the price of a drink, and there is no such conservator conserva-tor of the domestic virtues as for a man having to work so hard all day he Is too tired to leave his owa fireside at night. Poverty is a great moralist, and our purse, as often as our principles, prin-ciples, decides our course of action. The question thus suggested, however, how-ever, of whether poverty or riches makes for connubial happiness is an interesting one. According to the old adage when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out the window, butl there are many cases where when riches come down the chimney love sneaked out the back stairs, and so the problem is left unanswered. Undoubtedly, bitter, biting poverty is a hard test for love to stand. In its essence even love must be material. mater-ial. When you aro hungry you are more stomach than heart. When you are cold you think more of the temperature tem-perature of your body than you do of the temperature of your affections. When you are harrassed by bills and hounded by collectors, money and not sentiment, fills your waking thoughts and nightly dreams. Love has to comfortable, com-fortable, so to speak, before it can work. But on the other .hand it can be smothered to death by too much luxury, lux-ury, and our common observations, as well as the records of the divorce courts, go to show that love and married mar-ried happiness aro among the luxuries luxur-ies that no millionaire has money enough to buy. Occasionally they are his by chance, but nobody in search of the ideal Darby and Joan would hunt for them in the palaces of the wealthy. There are many reasons why the possession of great wealUi should tend to separate people who are marled, instead of drawing them together. Tho greatest, in this country, is because of the fact that the American man who achieves a fortune spends the first part of his life making it and the balance bal-ance in taking care of It He lives In a world apart from his wife, whose interests she does not share, and whose language she does not speak. He gets up early, and stays out late, and when he Is at home he Is generally too nervous and tired to talk. The richer the man becomes, the higher this barrier grows, until the wife of the multimillionaire finds that she has no husband nothing but a money making machine. That money brings temptations to the rich man that the poor man nevor knows, goes without saying. In the first place, if he inherits his money, it is hardor for the camel to go through tho eye of the needle than for him to escape being married for his possessions. posses-sions. Then, married' or single, women wom-en smile up.on 'lTim who can reward thelr.. blandishments with rich gifts and""so it is that the man who, had boen poor, would have been permitted to walk the straight and narrow path of peace, finds himself the victim of adventuresses, simply on account of his wealth. Statistics show that the ratio of divorce di-vorce is much greater in rich and fashionable sociey than among the poor. This does not necessarily imply, im-ply, as many seem to suppose, any greater moral laxness among the rich than among the poor. Take them man for man, and woman for woman, the smart set are probably just as virtuous vir-tuous and with as high principles as the burgeolso who criticize them. There is doubless just as much incompatibility incom-patibility of temper and uncongenlal-ity uncongenlal-ity of taste in green grocery circles as there is in banking circles. The only difference is that the green grocer is lucky enough not to have lime to think of his domestic misery. He is so hard worked trying to make both ends meet that he hasn't time to consider whether his wife represents rep-resents his ideal of feminine perfection perfec-tion or not, while Mrs. Greengrocer's thoughts are effectually and permanently perma-nently diverted from yearnings for a real soul mate by having to get up and prepare breakfast, and patch her husband's trousers. Insofar, poverty is the handmaiden of domestic happiness. hap-piness. Furthermore, the habit of self indulgence in-dulgence is strong upon 'the rich, and the man and woman who are not used to doing without anything they want, aro pretty apt not to deny themselves a forbidden flirtation. But most of all it is ennui, the desire for fresh sensations and fresh amusements, and a general lack of something to do, Hint 1c nf thn hnttnm nf fho Hnmnalln infidelities of the rich.. You haven't time to hunt for affinities or even to know that you haven't got one, when you are hustling for a living, and that's the reason that poor people so seldom get divorced. The wisest prayer that was ever offered of-fered to Heaven was when the psalmist psalm-ist exclaimed: "Give me neither poverty pov-erty nor riches" and this petition might woll be incorporated In the prayers of the marriage sorvlce. Undoubtedly, the happiest couples are those where there is neither tho wolf nor the automobile auto-mobile at the door. The very lack of money for amusements amuse-ments throws a couple on ench other for- companionship. They have not the means for the long European trips and the summers apart that unconsciously, uncon-sciously, but inevitably, wean husband and wife from each other, for there Is a habit In loving as in other things, and wo can get used to doing without people. Right here, in this particular, Is where narrow means are most a blessing in disguise, for when a husband hus-band and wife have reached the point that they aro not necessary to each other's happiness, the finest flower of love lies dead. Life is full of compensations, and tho most wonderful and beautiful of all is that tho beggar may have that which no money can buy true and disinterested love. |