Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 246, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1917 — Little Problems ff Life [ARTICLE]

Little Problems ff Life

By WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN

(Copyright) - DANGER OF GROWING APART MENTALLY. When two friends start out for a long walk together they seem instinctively to adjust their steps so that they walk side by side, within touching distance of each other. If one gradually quickens his pace until he is yards ahead of the other and, in his self-absorption, increasingly widens the distance between th?in, they cease to be two "walking together and be•<come two walking alone. Marriage Is • lifelong walk together of two who have selected each other from all the world. It is community of thought, ideals, alms, needs and sentiments that tends to keep them in step. It does not mean a sacrifice of individuality, nor does it demand unanimity of opinion, but there should ever be progressive harmony on essentials and progressive sympathy on nonessentials. Some men feel a pleasant glow of satisfaction in fulfilled duty when they divide generously with their wives their material prosperity. If money were the only thing in life, or even the greatest thing, their view Would be correct, but the really greatest things in the world are those that money cannot buy. When a man finds himself growing broader mentally and does not share his new self with his wife, he is taking an intellectual elevator and letting her trudge alone up the stairway as best she can. When he grows into a larger and finer social world and does not make her a part of it he is traveling in the parlor-car and keeping her in the day coach. When the larger interpretation of life and its problems strengthens his spiritual and ethical vision, while his wife continues in the narrow horizon of unilluminated household cares, he is monopolizing the telescope, whichbrings things near and larger, leaving her the microscope which only incyases the importance of her trifles. Growing apart mentally must, under these conditions, become inevitable. It may be that he atone la to blame; it may be her fault, or it may be the blind thoughtlessness of both. His repeated: attempts to talk over with her his ideals, his dreams of ambition, his plans, purposes and progress, to stimulate her interest, to share with her his intellectual uplift may be met with no real comprehension, no sympathy, no inspiring response. When comradeship in marriage dies, it really makes very little difference what the postmortem verdict as to the decease may be. ■ When the husband is out in the world of business which tends to blend with the social world, he may' broaden mentally as he prospers materially. He travels over the country, and in a wider acquaintance with men and conditiops has many of the rough edges of provincialism worn smooth. He meets men of attainment and action, men of power, and prestige, and under a more stimulating environment develops latent strength of his own. He brushes up against keen minds that put a new edge on his thinking; he is In closer touch with current thought and opinion; he has acquired a polish. The keynote of his living, so far as society is concerned, is higher. His tastes become more discriminating, his demands more exacting. If he has not been sharing these things with the wife of his youth, he finds she has been standing still while he has been progressing. She who faithfully struggled with him and foi* him, helped him to get the foothold of his present success, and became absorbed in working, planning and saving, may now be a mere drudge. He has a new standard of life now, and she falls sadly short of IL He measures things more superficially, and though her heart may be unchanged, her head is not up to date. He may be ashamed to introduce her into the new society oi which he has become a part; she is plain, unattractive, overretiring or overloquacious. She is aggressive in her dress and display ; she is not familiar with the rules of the, social game—with the “technique” of his new set. The old equality between them has been destroyed—killed through neglect. It is not the work of a moment, but the slow, widening process of years of growing apart. But the realization of it all may come in a moment. There may be suddenly an illuminating flash of consciousness, when he tarily faces it, in comparing her with other women. j r Some little mannerism of hers that ''once was sweet, just because it was hers, jars on his sensibilities and strikes a discordant note. Once he did not care whether she thought it was Homer or Carlyle who wrote “Silas Mariner,” pr whether she had heard of either author or book. Perhaps at that time he did not know the book himself. The red tape of society’s cards, passwords and methods may have, become second nature to him, and he is unjust in his condemnation of an ignorance which would not have existed had he been sharing with her his expanding life. He may notice with a grating sense of dismay that she does not put the soft pedal on her 4 laughter to conform to the proper "fippHng—notes of mirth prescribed by the social code. She, too, may hme her saddening morhents of realization and refuse to enter a world where she feels her inferiority,

or not realizing, may, to his chagrin, insist on her rights. Usually she*boldly takes the plunge into the social waters, confident that she will, somehow, get back to shore. She may live, In his presence, in an atmosphere of patronizing tolerance, fearing at every word that she may stumble into some pitfail of mispronunciation or an Inadvertent phrase, or, growing self-assured and reckless, she puts on a full head of steam In the presence of a position requiring tact and just crashes through it like an engineer running his train over a burning bridge. His bearing may reach its melting point; In his acquired supersensitiveness he puts fictitious values on points where she Is deficient and his tolerance fades into positive neglect. He may then devote his ‘whole time to finer minds, fairer faces and freer morals. How far they may drift apart, no one can tell. It may be that it is the wife who advances mentally, and he who is the laggard. The Increased prosperity may mean close confinement- for him to the drudgery of business. The society of a few’ old friends, survivals of the time when he was poor and struggling, may be all he cares for. Literature may not appeal to him. His dally paper supplies all his needs. The activities of the world of modern science, thought and culture have for him no real interest. His wife, left free to the rounding out of her mind and life, may develop a taste for reading, for companionship that is mentally worth having, for original thinking, for the ch nr tn of true conversation, for the discussion of subjects of real Importance. She may gather around her a circle of friends who feed her mental hunger and stimulate her thinking. He feels vaguely out of place with these new friends of hers, like a poor relation at a Christmas dinner. She has found her way into the land of the Intellectual and has established a residence there, while he, In his loneliness and isolation, is camping on its He feels somewhat a stranger in his own house at social gatherings of her friends. He may chafe under the feeling that he is on the wrong side of the proscenium arch; that he is not one of the performers, but merely a spectator. He longs to cut but all “this heavy intellectual business” and go off quietly with a friend or two and just sit, and talk, and smoke. This growing apart mentally may assume any of a hundred phases. Husband and wife may be subjected to any class of differing environments that change their mental standpoint and their moral sympathy. New ideas and new ideals may sweep old landmarks of mutual understanding far ©ut to sea. It is a sad outgrowing of a union of love and companionship, a growing unsatisfiedness where speech that meets no sympathetic response lapses into silence. When sympathy and recognition of one’s ideals are found only outside the home walls, when the instinctive impulse to tell of a success or a failure turns to some one else, when ears grow hungry for outside praise, there is serious danger to the happiness of married life. It is so easy to keep together if both realize the vital importance to all that is sweetest in life in keeping in step, in true comradeship. Talking over the affairs of their individual lives and their life in common, the hopes, the longings, the doubts, the joys and the problems, gives each the basis of knowledge from which most truly to understand and advise each other. Reading the same books, discussing the same current events, hearing the same music, seeing the same plays, criticizing the same pictures, having dearest friends in common, agreeing on the same spiritual and ethical attitude towards life, and sharing in thoughts and plans will do much towards making a growing apart mentally an impossibility. This keeping in step does not mean the sacrifice, of the stronger to the weaker, but the stronger ever, through love, raising the weaker to higher planes of thinking and living. It is; not necessary that they should even agree as to the value of each other’s pursuits or views, but that both should know them, understand them and respect them and be lovingly tolerant where they are not united in their sentiment or desires. They should give ever their best to each other. When the husband is a clever, delightful companion at some one else’s dinner-table, but a sad, still-life study in silence at his own, he is not giving his best at home. He is retaining his best for the export trade and reserving none for home consumption. When the wife has charity, consideration and sympathy for the cares of others outside the Ijpme, and only sharpness and sarcasm those inside, the timetable Of fthaL-hpnie requires instant revisiorE’or- there will be a crashing disaster to their train—o£ happiness. Sources of discord multipljfetttee Australian rabbits when the growing apart intensifies. It is the sacred duty of both to prevent it at the very beginning, to determine that they will permit no thoughtlessness, drifting, no false sense of duty to family or to the world, to separate them from each other.