Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1879 — Woman’s Lying Lives. [ARTICLE]

Woman’s Lying Lives.

A writer in the London World says: When an entire life is one organized falsehood, what material moment can there be in a few untruths more or less? These living embodiments of mendacity are less rare than might be imagined. It is not that they are exceptionally given to the vice of falsehood in details. Their distinguished peculiarity is that events have placed them in a position which makes their whole existence a lie. Who does not know the lady wedded to the man whom, in her fonder moments, she vainly imagined was her choice? Possession is the grave of illusion, and the lover who was all that was noble and chivarous stands revealed as the mean-spirited, commonplace and generally contemptable husband. Before the treacle-moon is over, the bride sees the bridegroom of her heart in his true colors —an empty-headed, pretentious, dull impostor. Yet this was years ago, and so far as the world is allowed to know anything of the matter, the middleaged father of her children is to be the matron all that the youthful lover was. The casual spectator sees in the gentleman what, as a matter of fact, his wife sees him too. Nevertheless, the casual spectator is given to understand that he is the sovereign lord of her bosom, gifted with all the attributes which make humanity great and good. She is not merely loyal to him—she worships him. He is at once her husband and her oracle. She never wearies of quoting his dullest platitudes as pearls of wit and wisdom, yet all the time she is well aware at heart that he is what the world in general takes him to be. Who shall blame her, any more than the habitual drunkard, who, as a last desperate resource, takes the pledge. The two cases are exactly parallel The lady knows that total abstinence from criticism is the only guarantee o toleration, just as the alcoholized sot perceives that if he is ever to be sober he must forget the tastes of stimulants. The discipline is severe at first, but the habit comes at last, and the lady who has attained to it well knows that any ralapse into an attitude bf impartial observance would be fatal.