Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 42, Number 19, 4 December 1916 — Page 8

THE RICHMOND PALLADIUM AND SUN-TELEGRAM,

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f - x V W k !f?"' 5 "'.V 3 JACK WHELLER GIVES BILLY BARTLETT SOME PIOTUR E&QUE ADVISt.

Avery Hopwood Says Four Out of Five Husbands Are Too Good to Their Wives.

If You Can Be Good Without Being Tiresome, You're a Wonder, Says Playwright

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LAURA BARTLETT THREATENS HER "MODEL HUSBAND" WITH DIVORCE.

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UE trouble with you is, you're

too good to your wife

, you're too good for any self-

resictin' woman," says the

iian whose wife is devoted to him to Xie roan whose "wife is about to divorce him for his boresoineness, in 'Fair and Warmer," Avery Ilopwood's htost farce. "A woman doesn't want l model husband. She may think she Joes, but let her get one, and she aaighty soon begins to lfxik around for lometldng else," the tempter continues. . On the results of this airy advice, Mr. Hopwood has built a tumultuous farce, but the problem he raises bobs head ud now and azain, and more

than one of its interested hearers takes the subject up in all seriousness, after the laughs are done. For Mr. Ilopwood's part, he has done nil he could in "Fair and Warmer" to give the subject a full hearing on both sides. When the hearing is over, the "Model Husband" hasn't much to say for himself. But perhaps Mr. Hopwood is wrong, ""n His play begins with a domestic tragedy. It is, in brief, that Laura Bartlett is so bored with the everlasting goodness of her husband that she vows to divorce him. She fries vainly to explain to him that the single-mindedness of his devotion is driving her mad. "I

want to look up to my husband, of course, ' she says, "but I don t want to have to look so far that I fall over backwards." Poor Billy Bartlett agonizes over the problem. He would like to be less good o her, if she wanted him to, but he doesn't know how. He couldn't possibly love another woman. He would drink if he could, but be came of a long line of total abstainers, and so he can't fan up a taste for drink. He doesn't know how to smoke," and would probably choke to death trying to learn. Surely she doesn't want him to neglect his business and let them both go hungry. And, to save him, he can't stay up late at night, because at tenthirty he goes fast asleep, no matter where he is. He always had been just like this. He couldn't see how to improve. . -m Laura merely repeats that she is bored to tears, and that she will die of stagnation if she doesn't leave him. Just here enters the man whose wrife is devoted to him. To hear him tell it, his marriage is a success because he keeps his wife in a constant state of agitation about him. She Is a gentle homebody, never daring to leave the family fireside Without him, . patiently waiting till he returns, loving him rapturously because he does return, after her long terms of anxious watching. . J

This sounds like fatal heresy to Billy, but he is bound to admit that Jack's wife wouldn t leave him for the sun, the moon and the stars, and that his own wife is even at the moment packing up her things. In the face of this proof of his own errors he agrees to try Jack s methods and scef he can hold his wife by a course of misbehavior. When Mr. nopwood was approached to solve this problem, incidentally not quite solved in the course of his play, he said that, although he didn't want to take sides, he thought a man could lose his wife more quickly by being too good to her than he could by being too bad to her. "Of the two, the good man loses," he says. "I agree with you that that is a distressing fact It is one which theoretically! cannot explain. -But long observation has proved it to me. I suspect that it is because there is not much variety in goodness. A man who is always, invariably, good to his wife, and who has no distracting vices, large or small, presents her with a pretty monotonous outlook.' Most women ; see life . through the eyes of their husbands. They live only such lives as their husbands can find time and inclination to share with them. They have no 'outside interests' except in unusual cases. ' ' '.' "The result is that they must find in

their husbands all the variety and adventure that husbands find in their homes plus their business, plus their clubs and their sports. This is why the demand for the 'model wife' is so much greater than that for the 'model husband.' "That, also, I think, is why the man who is attractive to all other women is attractive to nis wife. Tnrougn ms importance in the world she feels that her own is increased. And there is no question about it importance is determined by how many people are actively interested In you, and mostly by how many are of the opposite sex! "Although I have had my youngsters in 'Fair and Warmer make a great todo over the efficiency of jealousy in these cases of bored wives and bored husbands, I refuse to let them solve their difficulties by means of jealousy, because I don't think it is as important as it's cracked up to be. The thing which really comes to Laura, after the total collapse of Billy's good behavior, is the mother-instinct It is that which intrigues her. and keeps her willing, finally, to forgive him. "With the other pair, too, it is not jealousy which brings about their solution. It is the man's protective instinct, and the tremendous love he has for her. which keeps him in line, even before he has learned of her innocence.

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BILLY'S FLIER IN WICKEDNESS TEACHES HIM "HOW TO BE A HUSBAND."

"But to return to the 'model husband.' It has been a flippant comment almost universally made, that there aren't any. Do you know, I believe four husbands out of five are absolutely 'model?' "That is the great lack of our lives that we are 'model' because we haven't initiative enough to be anything else. Heaven knows I am not advocating any real moral lapses. Those are the province of tragedy, anyway, and not

of farce. All I ask, when I complain against the 'model husband.' is a certain amount of occasional irresponsibility, a gayety in the face of life, and a few dear human frailties. "Most of the people you love most are the people to whom you have had to forgive most The 'model husband' as I see him, and as I warn against him, is the man who hasn't a fault to bless himself with and I mean that to be taken literally!"

istoric Scenes in Old New England

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Scene of The Battle 'at Bloody Brook ; in. Deerfield.Mass5

In passing through South Deerfield, Mass., autoists cross the historic old stream called Bloody Brook, a name derired from the freightful massacre by Indians which occurred there on the 18th of September, 1675. " In tltose days King Philip, sachem of the Pokanoket tribe of Indians, was on the warpath.. He had so terrified the? settlers of the Connecticut River Valley that the northernmost towns of Northfield and Deerfield were ordered abandoned. In abandoning Deerfield the settlers had left large stores of newlv harvested grain, and it was in qnest of those needed stores that Captain Lathrop, with a picked troop of eighty men, proceeded to Deerfield from the town of Iladley, twenty miles south. The grain had been successfully procured and the party was some six miles out of the settlement of Deerfield when it prepared to ford a stream. The stream was bordered by thick woods, and tradition relates that the men imprudently placed their weapons in the wagons and scattered to gather the wild grapes which abounded. Thus disarmed, they were quickly and completely overwhelmed by the hordes of Indians estimated at TOO strong, by whom they had been ambushed. Of the eighty or more men in Captain Lathrop's command not more than eight escaped alive. Two other scouting squads of Englishmen which were, in the vicinity hurried to the scene upon hearing battle, but could do nothing except drive the Indians away 60 that the bodies of their comrades might be decently buried. 4 . A monument now marks the scene of this horrible massacre, and the stream where the disaster occurred ii known to this day as Bloody Brook.

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Historic Scenes in Old New England

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Lmda Griffith m "Charity."

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Nearly half of the woman workers

in factories in the United States earn

less than ?6 a week.

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01 D HADLEY where a regicids of Charles I appeared "from nULiCI here "and saved the panic stricken settlers

Old Hadley, a beautiful Xew England town, situated upon the east bank of the Connecticut River soma twenty miles north of Springfield, Mass., was a center of great activity during the stirring days rtlr Philip's Indian wars. On Sept. 1, 1675, while at worship in the village meeting house, the inhabitants of Old Hadley were surprised by an attack upon their settlement by a horde cf Indians. Abandoning worship, they, seized their arms and rushed out to defend their homes, but the suddenness of the attack found them utterly demoralized. When the confusion was at its height there suddenly appeared in their midst an unknown man of grave and elderly bearing, who at once took command of the situation, issued orders, rallied the defenders and in short order routed the redskins from the town. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, did the stranger effect his removal from the scene, and his identity for many years remained a comparative mystery. ' f , It was later .established that the deliverer of Iladley was General William Goffe, one cf the three living regicides of Charles I. and for whose head a liberal bounty was offered. Aftsr years of pursuit from place to place he found safe hiding under hospitable roof of Pastor John Iiussel of the Old Iladley congregation. It is believed that after his spectacular rfetiverance of the Iladley settlers he remained still undiscovered in the Russel household until his death 6ome five years later. 'A beautiful state road winding up the Connecticut valley take3 thousands of autoists each year directly by the spot where General Goffe rallied the inhabitants of Old Iladley to the defense of their homes.

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