Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 305, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1917 — Page 2

Little Problems of Married Life

By WILLIAM GEORGB JORDAN

(Copyright) THE 4 TYRANNY OF TOO TIGHT A REIGN. Tyranny in a nation can transform the freest people that ever breathed Into hopeless slaves, numbly submissive and spiritless, or scheming rebels with a smile on their lips but hate in their hearts as they dream their golden dreams of secret revolt and a bold break for liberty.* There is a brand of bossism in married life, of petty tyranny in the home that duplicates in miniature this dilemma of results. It saps the ambition, courage and vitality of husbands and wives, and transforms them into dull, crushed, colorless beings, or if they do not submit thus meekly it trains them persistently sh smiling hyprocrisy, trickery, deceit, lying and plotting to cheat the tyranny they do not dare openly to resent, f Have you ever met the husband, of the timid, suppressed type, who always answers his wife’s call with “yes, my dear,” “no, my dear* or “just in a moment, my dear.” It is never the sweet “dear” that drops gently into a sentence like a caress. His “my dear” with its monotonous iteration of a phonograph record seems a continuous phrase of placating. It is not affection, it is just fear; it seems a pleading deprecatory gesture of the voice as if trying to dodge a rebuke or a lecture as one involuntarily wards off an attack with the upraised arm. You somehow feel that you should take him Into a cozy corner and soothe him, and tell him not to be afraid, that you will protect him. When you are alone with him he may talk easily, cleverly and well; the stream of his conversation runs smooth and free like a mountain brook but It. suddenly trickles into irrelevant commonplaces when his wife enters the room, the whole atmosphere seems •changed, and you vaguely wonder who shut off the water supply. You do not like the surreptitious way he covers his lighted cigar with his hat; it seeins too much like a child caught with its hand tn the sugar bowl. He can never tell you definitely whether he can go out tomorrow night; he will let you know later and you feel that he has already begun to plan how he can secure his wife’s countersign to his pass. Even when he is doing what is absolutely right and harmless he becomes wonderously fertile in lying excuses, those conversational capsules to sweeten the breath of suspicion. His ill-concealed joy when his ■wife has to go out of town for a day or two is not a mere confession; it is a condensed biography.

Sometimes it is the husband, In domineering assertion of authority, who plays the poor,' petty role of domestic tyrant. He dictates, he demands, he threatens, he forbids, he issues his orders as ultimatums in a manner that would be unwarranted even were he a pirate captain haranguing his crew. He forgets that marriage means partnership not proprietorship, freedom of both in the best interests of both, not slavery of either. His assaults on her rights when he crosses the dead line of intolerance and despotically demands obedience may not be received as submissively, as uncomplainingly and as finally, as he in his blind conceit believes. He may secure an outward semblance of submission but actually contemptuous rebellion. Brought to bay, her bitter protest of opposition may make her dangerously ingenious in outwitting him. When in a moment of pique at some act of her family he dares to order her never tb see them or write them or hear from them, she feels the cruel injustice of this cutting of the ties of love and tenderness she may resort to subterfuge, Intrigue, evasion and systematic deception and defy him behind his back while she seems sweetly and serenely resigned in his presence. She may drift unknowingly into a course of action normally repugnant as she surrenders to a tide of conditions of constant despotic injustice. Tyranny needs a hundred watch dogs—trustful love, non®. When she finds a quarantine ordered against some of her dearest and best friends coming to the house, her self-respect blushes at z the plausible lies she writes or speaks to prevent their knowing the real reason. When she fears to tell him of some misdeed of one of the children because of the cruel punishmeflt his anger may prescribe, he is slamming the door on her confidence and giving a bonus of new license to the little rebel in the nursery. When she gives false statistics as to <tbe price of some simple article she has bought, just to avoid a “scene," he is giving her unwise post-graduate courses in duplicity which may later prove costly. He is worse than wrong —he is foolish. He Is paying a big price for his tyranny when the song dies away on her lips ns she hears his key click in the lock in the evening and she draws a long breath of relief when he leaves home in the morning. Then she may remember with a sigh and a little dimming of the eyes the sweet early days of their married life when, not satisfied with the mere good morning kiss she used to stand on the porch and follow him with her eyes and semaphore love with her fluttering little wisp of a handkerchief as he looked back in the ■unwhine at the bend of the road that

soon shut him from her sight. And she had struggled sb long and faithfully to hold back the ebbing tide of her lave fir him and love had gone and carried respect with it, and she, grown hard, and bitter . nd rebellious, had lost the best of life and so had he. Sometimes a wife may unwisely seek to keep the love, loyalty and constancy of her nusband by holding him with a Wght rein,, by restrictions and limitations that fretted and chafed, by petty exactions and tyrannies to keep him close by her side. Have you ever held a butterfly in the prison of your palm, with the slightly-parted, arched fingers as bars, and, fearing it might escape, press inadvertently a little too tightly and then be suddenly conscious that the fluttering whirr had ceased and, opening the bars and peering in, find that the beautiful wings were stilled forever and that the butterfly was dead? There are men and women who thus kill love carelessly: they may have a great love secure, right in their hands, but there is a pressure of doubt, tyranny, distrust or compulsion and the life of that love may die. Love grows strong with freedom, confidence and trust. Love that needs constant watching is not worth watching, and no guarding through fear of its honor will ever keep it from straying. Its strength must be in itself and in the inspiration that comes from realization, recognition and response. There are homes that are over-gov-erned. They have as many laws, rules and regulations as an Institution. They remind you of these closely printed charts for conduct tacked on the inner side of doors in hotel rooms. In these homes you move about gingerly for of stepping Inadvertently on a “don’t.” No individual is big enough, nor wise enough, nor great enough to dare to live the life of another, not with him, but for him. If he were all these his reverence for the individual rights of others would make it impossible for him to usurp their sacred privilege of freedom in living their own lives, fully, freely, frankly, at their best.

This domestic tyranny rules in thousands of homes. It means the wrong of two —the one who inflicts It and the one who bears It. We hear much of the grace of patience and the beauty of long suffering. They are virtues when it means self-sacrifice for the right, vices when for the wrong. Tolerating Injustice meekly without protest and a mighty effort to overthrow it when no good cause is served, no noble purpose promoted is not moral bravery, it Is sheer cowardice. It is the fear of an unpleasant half-hour that may save years of suffering. The one who bears meekly Is doing Injustice to herself or to himself and —to the other. It means weakening and wronging self and feeding the evil in another’s nature by inaction. The wife may say “he would flare up In an awful temper if I said a word.” Let him flare, but let him understand that you will not be a party to it. These home bosses are always bullies and bullies are always cowards. They do not stand out long against a bold defiance that shows no fear. At the first manifestation of this variety of performance, let husband or wife' state positively that no encores will be permitted. At a quiet, dignified session, with no shade of anger but just a calm, cool ultimatum that while the Innocent one is willing to do the square thing in every relation, and to meet bravely whatever the tides of fate may bring and to suffer for the other, but never from the other.

Like most evils it is easy to meet in the beginning and it is then It should be met in the right spirit for the good of both. A single bold stand for the right is worth years of cowardly patience for the wrong. The greatest trials and sorrows are those that do not come from outside the home, but are absolutely created within, that are manufactured for one by the temper or wrong of the other. They are absolutely preventable and there should be a kindly helpful spirit on the part of both to remove any wrong that separates them rather than to intensify the reign of the wrong by weak and meekly bearing. It is not selfishness, but the reckless assertion of individuality, but the consecrated wisdom that seeks to cure what it cannot endure and to endure what it cannot cure. Love and sweet conference smooths out so many of these problems. Let there be but one boss and that one — the two. Let them unite in loving comradeship and fine co-operation, each doing the best without thought of competition or conquest and then even the wish of one become the will of both, in union and unity, with no tyranny but that of love, love of right, love of peace, love of justice and love of each other.

Women Best Prevaricators.

“Women are better liars than men, but God bless them just the same,” said Police Magistrate J. M. Fitzgerald of the Omaha police court.l “Women come into court and He right along, under oath. Their lies do not show on their faces, either, but I can tell they are lying because their stories contradict those of reliable witnesses. “When men He .they hesitate, turn red, swallow, etc. One can tell they’re lying just by watching their faces and necks. * “But you can’t tell it on a woman. They He outrageously and stick to their stories in the face of everything. They know just the right time to deviate from the truth, too. Their Ilea always Count in the outcome of their trials —if they are believed. Men haven’t the same knack at the art that women police court characters have."

TYIE EVENING REPUBLICAN. RENSSELAER. IND.

NEW SHAPES ODD

Popular Hat Imitation of Stage Driver’s Headpiece. c Charm of This Style Linea In the Shaggy Material With Which the Frame Is Covered. J The lower head in the accompanying sketch shows the high-crowned hat of “oursine," which is an almost exact Imitation of the quaint hats worn by the drivers of stage coaches in olden times. This may be said to be the most popular shape of the present season and it is exceedingly becoming to pretty faces, writes Idalia de Villiers, Paris fashion correspondent. The whole charm of this style of hat Is embraced in the shaggy material

Two New Shapes.

with which the’shape is covered. In some cases long-haired silk beaver is adopted, but silk beaver hats are exceedingly expensive and for ordinary wear shapes covered with soft “oursine” are quite as effective. The model sketched was in pure white oursine, with a wide band of sapphire-blue velvet twisted round the top of the crown and tied in a loose bow at one side. Similar hats are simply trimmed with a wide band of crochet work in some bright-colored wool, with a full tassel falling coquettlshly over the right ear. The second head shows a model by Lewis. This is one of the newest shapes, and it is half hat, half toque. In front the brim is pressed into a point, but at the back it is flat and finished with a large, flat bow. No trimming is introduced on hats of this kind, and they are worn well pressed down over the hair. For wearing with simple tailored suits this model would be specially suitable and it might be made in some bright colored velvet or panne; for example. in emerald green or tomato red. The crown is high and very full, with a slight tendency toward extra width at the back. For everyday wear such a hat might be made of gray oursine, or of golden-yellow chamois cloth, with a flat black satin bow at the back.

CLING TO CHARM OF YOUTH

Good Complexion Cannot Be Retained if Covered With Layers of Rouge and Swathes of Powder. Every young girl, no matter who she may be, has the charm of youth and should hold it. It is as elusive as a dream and cannot last for many years, so while it is hers she should cherish it. It is the look of youth. But no girl can hold it, no matter how clever, who covers it up with layers of rouge and swathes of powder, declares a beauty specialist. A touch of rouge when one is tired and the face is colorless, especially In the evening, is not unpardonable, but the girl who has a good complexion, the gift of nature, should never resort to rouge or powder, except for the light rice powder that keeps the face from the shiny look, which is such a detractor of beauty. It seems almost unbelievable that any girl with a really good complexion would resort to paint or powder, and yet it is true that many do. It may be that these girls have an idea that these aids to complexion give to them the appearance of sophistication. And they are right, in a measure. For rouge invariably does give the lines of the face an older look, a hardening of the countenance, if too rashly used.

GIRL MAKES NOVEL REMINDER

Artistic Results 4 c b’ evec l by Use of Common School Slate and a Little Black Enamel. One girl, who rejoices in more artistic impulses than a .good memory, has made for herself the cutest little reminder Imaginable. The foundation is a slate like the youngsters use or used to use in the lower grades of school. With some black enamel she gave the frames two coats until it shone just like the lovely Oriental lacquer work. Thea from a Japanese tray she copied a 'few suggestive sketches of Fujiyama, the famous snow-capped mount, a pagoda or two on-the framework right over the black auami'i with some gray paint. To the

slate she tiling a slate pencil on a bright red cord with a tiny sponge at one end. This she hangs right near her bed, and when something she must remember strikes her just as she jumps into bed before sleep comes, down it goes on the pretty slate and is safe till the morrow. The same idea could be used for a girl who boards for laundry lists, or for messages which come by ’phone while she is out. «

STYLES FOR WINTER COATS

Fashion Provides for Straight Lines . With Generous Fullness, but There Must Be No Flare. Straight lines characterize the best coats designed for the season. This must not be taken to mean that the garments are narrow. Quite the contrary is true. Generous fullness is let in, but they are without flare. In street and utility coats sleeves are usually set in, while flowing sleeves cut in one with the garment are the rule on evening wraps. An Indicated waistline is almost the invariable rule with the new coats. Sometimes a belt that is wide and gir-dle-shaped is used; again a strap belt tied loosely and with hanging ends may be favored. The coat with empire back and slightly circular front section is occasionally seen. Dressy afternoon coats of satin, or velvet, and nearly always elaborately furtrimmed, are being given a great deal of attention by the best designers and a strong demand for them is expected.

WATCH THE LITTLE THINGS

Wise Mothers Keep Eye on Remnant Counter and Utilize Leftovers for Little Girls’ Dresses. The little girl of the family may be charmingly outfitted at a trifling cost if thought and Industry go into the task. Few people are so foolish as to underestimate the importance of appearance, and the woman who dresses well with a comparatively small outlay of money in her turn, has been properly dressed as a child by a mother who took interest in her small daughter’s clothes. The wise mother will keep an eye on the remnant counter, and on odds and ends left over from the apparel of grown-up members of the family. With a clever combination of fabrics, or a deft touch of handwork here and there, she will give originality and individuality to dresses for the little girl. A complete season’s outfit should never be arranged.at one time. A new dress now and then means more to a child than it does to an adult, so that to some extent the juvenile wardrobe should be arranged piecemeal.

BOTH HANDSOME AND USEFUL

This model exemplifies the fact that a suit can be both handsome and useful. It is a serviceable all-round suit, of taupe velour, with a touch of mole trimming.

Color of Coats.

The world that is tired of colored coat suits and suspicious of colored topcoats takes to the dried peat and heather colors because they fit into the landscape of other costumes. They’re not Rebellious. They do not shriek at a gown or a hat. They melt into the color scheme given by the other parts of the costume and, therefore, prove a delight instead of a burden to the woman.

Fabrics to Cling.

Serge is good, if it is soft; other wise, it should be barred. The fundamental thing is to get the fabric that clings to the figure. AU others must be put on the opposite side of the scale. Nothing must have any chance to flare.

THE GRACES of WAR TIME PARIS

HAVE you ever looked Into a woman’s soul when her eyes wore a veil of sad tears and brave laughter? That is Paris just now, after three years of war sorrow and war triumph, writes James Milne in the Graphic. She has let sore tears fall, but, like the tears which make pearls, they begin to shine in the sun of assured victory. Paris puts her trials behind her, resolute that they are over and must be forgotten. She lets the smiles of a naturally merry heart light the road before her, knowing how to play the heroine in these great days, as she played them in the great days of old. “Paris vaut bien une inesse 1” said Henri Quatre. If he came back to her from the royal shades, he would think her worth many masses. Perhaps one knows a French lady who, in her elegant self, seems to incarnate War-Paris. She will wear black for somebody heroically dead, or in tribute to the nation’s “lost legion,” who are not. really lost, only gone before to prepare the way of a touch of white somewhere to lighten the black, as the sun breaks through clouds into a clear sky. Maybe she has been nursing, this French Iddy, ever since the war began. But there is no weariness in her bright eyes, no forgetfulness of the art, simple, subtle, instinctive, with which the French woman wears her clothes. You sympathetically ask for tales of tragedy begotten in her circle by the'hard excursions of Armageddon. She bends her head reverently, a flash in her face, and tells you the latest good story of inimitable Monsieur Poilu. Women Capable and Serious.

That, if you please, is Madame Paris, as you meet her in Boulevard and Bois, a woman who mourns for the departed, but in the cause of their departure finds a new moral inspiration. You understand her and salute her, In maid, wife and widow. How capable they are, how serious, how detached, to all appearance, from the frills and furbelows of the woman’s life as we used to regard it. But they remain complete women, with a coquettish response for a compliment, if it be delicate enough. Even Charles Edward Stuart, ancient bachelor as he is, Philistine as he fondly thinks himself to be, takes off his hat to the Parislenne in this war time. He is a dear friend of ours, he lives in Old Paris, just as the young pretender might have done, up a winding oak staircase so dark that the concierge gives you a candle to light it, and that is why we add a word to his rightful name and call him Charles Edward Stuart. “Yes,” says he, “the Parislenne is at least as fine as the Parisian under the war ordeal, some might say finer, a better mettle of the French pasture. She is a consoling force, at a high surge like this, of the fascinating and repulsive, mysterious and commonplace, awful and trivial life in which, God knows why, perhaps, we have been pitched for a few moments.” In Old Paris.

When a new book appears, read an old one when you want to understand the spirit of today’s Paris, go down into Old Paris; so we went to St. Etienne du Mont, near the Pantheon. “We are lucky,” whispered Charles Edwmrd Stuart, as we stood within the sacred walls, “in being here under the best conditions. Look! that gleam of sun falling on the little red-robed acolyte. And the clouds of incense from his swinging censor —it Is great.” Marguerite de Valois would think so herself, and the founding of St. Etienne du Mont goes back to her. That was the old church, and a window shows the removal of the shrine of the “Sainte” to the new church. It is, you see, the Paris that the Germans wanted to loot, and they would not, like ourselves, have stayed outside the door of St. Etienne du Mont and looked across the road at the wealth of picturesque old houses. They are typical of the ancieift bridge houses, and prints show the Pont Neuf to have been bordered with these. Nor would the Huns have wandered so the Impasse des Boeufs, which looks history to the very marrow, but has none that is recoverable. -“So much the better for people of imagination," quoth Charles Edward Stuart. “Isn’t it a nice, tumbled, jumbled, dirty, fascinating place?” No more would the Huns have halted at Bouchardon’s fountain in the Rue de Grenelle, or been taken by the charming much-tummied, polyJ \

A Boulevard Cafe.

gaster’d maiden in the bas-relief, rather out of it among the rampageous boys. It was Charles Edward Stuart who said these things, adding: “I meant to write an ode to her on the plan of Keats’ ‘Grecian Ode,’ but, as I don’t quite see how to do it better, I probably shall not do it at all.” No, my Young Pretender! The Paris of history and the Paris of the war meet and become the one they have shown themselves, in a place like the College Stanislas. Its shady grounds harbored Madam du Barry and her glittering circle. Captain Guynemer, the Roland of French aviators, and General Gouraud, who was at Gallipoli, are two of its many pupils to find fame in the w.ar. But while Gouraud was perfectly disciplined, Guynemer was a rather erratic little boy who would ask questions or answer back when reprimanded. He might often have been in disgrace, if the head master had not been so fond of him. Seven or eight years ago the College Stanislas had eight members in the French academy out of the divine forty. Its roll call Includes celebrities like Anatole France, Rostand, and Henri de Regnier. Its professors, at the moment, include the Abbe Dimnet, silver-tongued and golden-hearted, a man who helps to make War-Paris rich in scholarship, as well as rich in other airs and •graces.

GYPSIES OF BALKAN LANDS

Eastern Europe Original Home of th® Clan —Know All Roads and Bypaths. In the mountainous Balkan; lands the gypsies are as nearly at home as anywhere on the planet. There are native dialects in these parts not unlike their own and there are regions where the people resemble them closely in personal appearance. The Romany name is surely near akin to the Roumanian. Yet even here the gypsies are as alien to the people as a whole as are their brethren tramping the roads in western America, writes Nlksah. If the ethnologists are right the Balkan region is probably the original European home of the clan and they have ' been wandering back and forth across it for many centuries. Certainly they know all the roads and bypaths and in search for a guide you will sometimes find a gypsy who will tell you that he can take you over a certain mountain pass or through a certain valley, although he has never been that way himself, because he has heard his father or his grandfather tell of the road. Lore of the road is to the gypsy what lore of the market is to the broker or lore of the soil to the farmer, something precious, by which he lives, to be stored away for reference. These gypsies of eastern Europe range back and forth across the tumbled Balkan country, all the way from Constantinople westward to Hungary and Austria, even as far as Bohemia and the Russian frontier. Of all the world’s gypsies they are the most pov-erty-stricken in appearance, their caravans are the most miserable, their dogs the leanest and their children the dirtiest. Yet in some ways they are the ablest of the clan. They are certainly the most musical; their talent in this line is unmistakable and rare.

June 1 Day of Mourning.

President Johnson, succeeding Lincoln after the latter’s assassination, issued a proclamation appointing the 25th of May, 1865, as a day of national humiliation and prayer because of the death of Lincoln. Someone discovered that the 25th of May would be “Ascension day” in the Christian ecclesiastical calendar and called President Johnson’s attention to the incongruity of converting that Christian festival of rejoicing into a day of humiliation and prayer because of the death of a mortal man. Whereupon a new proclamation was issued substituting June 1 as the day of the mourning.

Boosting French Models.

“How do you expect me to dress on a paltry five hundred dollars a year?” asked Mr. Twobble. “Let me see,” said Mr. Twobble, taking out a pencil and note book. “At twenty dollars each, five hundred dollars would provide me with twentyfive suits, such as I am accustomed to wear. Yet you talk as if five hundred dollars wouldn’t even buy you a batb- ( robe."