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Show ) jl Dorothy Dix Talks j 1 1 TELLING THE TRUTH DOROTHTDIX ! Of course, It is one of the things that isn't done. It simply isn't. It can't be done. Telling the truth. If wo started out in tho morning and attempted at-tempted to speak the truth for one single day, wo would end up In the hospital hos-pital by mid-afternoon, and probably spend the balance of our lives on crutches, because wc had been so maimed, and so roughly man-handled by those whose vanity we had offended. of-fended. And wo would be poor, forlorn creatures, without a friend on earth. Nobody ever knew oven a moderately vr-rnrifiits nrrsrm. w-lin wns nonular In society, or one of those lucky indlvid-! indlvid-! uals at whoso coming every eye I brightens, and everyone begins to purr. Besides which nobody has the cour-'age cour-'age to speak the truth. There have ibeen heroes who have led forlorn hope ! but nobody was ever fool-hardy nough I to hope that any body would ever be grateful for being told the particular facts in his, or her, individual case. Yet, can you think of any ono thing that would work such an Immediate and wholesale reformation as for each of us to be handed a nice, large, solid chunk of truth about ourselves, and thus have our attention directed to some particular weakness? This would givo us a chance to correct it, for most of our faults are the faults of Ignorance. Ignor-ance. We are so blinded by our own egotism that wc do not know that we possess them, and we'd lop them off quickly enough If wc had a search dight turned on them. Particularly so-clal so-clal sins. i Wouldn't you like to be the truth j teller with a steel helmet and a gas , mask, a coat of chain armor on and (an airplane to make a quick getaway I in until the offended parties had had I time to cool down and realize that you were doing it lor their good? I There's a boy I know. Such a nice. ! young chap. So handsome, clever, and. j agreeable, and with such churmingi i manners. An up-and-coming young' man, loo, because he's just full of en-j ergy and pep, and fairly eats his work up. Some of these days he Is going to bo a 'big man, but ho must have had a cureless mother because she did not 'teach him how to hold his work. He 1 grabs it as if it were a harpoon, and he was going to make' an attack on a deep-sea whalo. Nobody could. see this) boy eat without having his stock go down fifty per cent in their estimation. How I wish I had tho courage to tell j him the truth, and advise him to lake I a few lessons in table etiquette. .It would be worth a hundred dollars to him, but. I shall nevor dare even whis-i.pcr whis-i.pcr to him that table cutlery is an appliance of luxury and not a weapon of offense and defense ' There's a young girl I know. Really a pretty, sweet, nice girl, with plenty of gray matter just above tho hair mattresses over her ears. This girl greatly desires to be admired by men, and to make a good marriage, but somehow she's made the mistake of thinking that tho way to attract the attention of men is beln.r loud and brazen and fast appearing. So sho dresses herself in the most extreme style. She paints her fresh young face, shaves and dyes her eyebrows, eye-brows, pretends to be a sport and brags about how much she can drink and how much money she lost on the races, talks about wornen having a right lo live their own lives and the slavery of conventions, and then she wonders why she seldom has a beau; j and when she does, he is sure to be one of the undesirables. How I would like to tell her the) truth and say 'VQuit being a silly little goose, pretending to be something you are not You are no sport. You're not even a tin horn sport, and you don't give a lifelike impersonation of one. Besides, they aro not the sort of women wo-men that men marry, anyway. If you would put on some decent clothes, wash the paint off your face, and babble bab-ble about the innocent simple things you really know, and let men know that you help mother with the housework house-work and make your own clcthes, you'd be as attractive lo men as you are unattractive now." But I shall never tell her and she will go on trying lo fit the wrong key into the door of the hearts of men, and she will never know that her folly I did her out of a good husband. And there is a woman. Such a nice, good, kind .'eman, and she has such a nice family. Really extraordinary clever and good-looking children. You never get a chance to forget that, Mother is a perpetual motion talking-machine talking-machine with one record on it, that sho grinds out unceasingly. Mary's beauty, John's intellect, Susie's talent. George's achievement in athletics. Their clothes, their beaus, their illnesses, ill-nesses, every slightest detail about them, over, and over, and over, again. Tho same tale a million limes, j How I would like to tell her tho truth, and say to her, "My dear woman, wo-man, you are not only making yourself your-self the champion bore of the community, commu-nity, but you are doing your children an irreparable injury. You are raising expectations of their performing miracles, mir-acles, and no matter what they do, ev-everybody ev-everybody will think they are" failures because they won't come up I ) your press agentry. Nothing human could. Besides you are prejudicing everybody about them because we aro all so tired of hearing about Mary. John, Susie and George, that we feel like ccream-ing ccream-ing if their names arc so much as mentioned." men-tioned." But I shall never tell her tho truth and shell will go on her devastating way, afflicting the patient listener, and queering her children to the end of tho chapter. And the middle-ago l woman who is always talking about how young she is and saying that she married when she was a mere child, and the individual whom everything reminds of something some-thing else, and the man who is always tells you the funny stories out of the humorous papers, and all of those who think they recite and sing and can't; oh, what a peaceful world this would be if we could only tell them lo can it, forget il lo get off that stuff forever, but we can't for somebody might retaliate re-taliate by telling us Iho trulh, and then where would we be? Dorothy DIx's articles will appear in this paper every Monday, Wednesday Wednes-day and Friday. nn |