Chapter I: Part 1

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_Dorothy Dix_]

_Dorothy Dix—Her Book_

Every-day Help
For Every-day People

SECOND EDITION

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK and LONDON
1927

Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention
of the Pan-American Republics and the
United States, August 11, 1910.

_Contents_

CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD xi

INTRODUCTION xix

I HOW A HUSBAND LIKES TO BE TREATED 1

II CHARM 10

III THE ORDINARY WOMAN 22

IV TEACH THE CHILDREN TO LOVE FATHER 27

V STRIKE A BALANCE WITH MATRIMONY 32

VI JEALOUSY 39

VII HAVE A GOAL 44

VIII THE GOAT FAMILY 48

IX SPOILING A WIFE 53

X THE ABSENCE CURE FOR FAMILY ILLS 58

XI THE DEADLY RIVAL 63

XII LEARN A TRADE, GIRLS 67

XIII TRIAL DIVORCE 76

XIV MARRY THE MAN YOU LOVE 81

XV ARE YOU GOOD COMPANY FOR YOURSELF? 87

XVI KEEPING YOUNG 92

XVII GOSSIP, THE POLICEMAN 96

XVIII THE LUCKY WORKING WOMAN 100

XIX AN INDOOR SPORT 105

XX SHOULD WOMEN TELL? 109

XXI DOMESTIC BOREDOM 114

XXII TO MARRY OR NOT TO MARRY 118

XXIII WOMAN’S GREATEST GIFT 122

XXIV GRAFTING ON THE OLD FOLKS 127

XXV ARE YOU A GOOD FATHER? 132

XXVI THE MORAL MUSCLES OF YOUR CHILDREN 136

XXVII THE MOTHER-IN-LAW 140

XXVIII WHY OUR FAMILIES RILE US 145

XXIX OUR LIVES ARE WHAT WE MAKE THEM 149

XXX HUSBAND LOSERS 154

XXXI MARTHA OR MARY? 159

XXXII THE T. B. M. AT HOME 163

XXXIII DON’T BE AFRAID TO LET YOUR HUSBAND SEE YOU LOVE HIM 169

XXXIV QUEER THINGS ABOUT MARRIAGE 174

XXXV HUSBANDS—THE LIVING CONUNDRUM 180

XXXVI THE POWER OF SUGGESTION 185

XXXVII WOMAN’S MISSIONARY OPPORTUNITY 190

XXXVIII HOW TO BE A GOOD HUSBAND 195

XXXIX GIVING CHILDREN ADVANTAGES 200

XL SELL YOURSELF TO YOUR CHILDREN 205

XLI TAKING HUSBANDS “AS IS” 210

XLII BEING A GOOD WIFE 215

XLIII INVALIDISM A GRAFT 222

XLIV SELFISHNESS MADE TO ORDER 227

XLV SELF-CONTROL 231

XLVI OLD FATHERS AND NEW DAUGHTERS 236

XLVII LOSING A WIFE’S LOVE 240

XLVIII THE LURE OF THE MARRIED MAN 245

XLIX FORGET IT 249

L LOST LOVE 254

LI THE SHOW WEDDING 259

LII WHEN YOUR CHILDREN ARE GLAD YOU DIE 264

LIII WHAT PRICE PLEASURE? 269

LIV THE IDEAL MOTHER 273

LV HOW TO CATCH A WIFE 278

LVI DANGEROUS GIRLS 283

LVII WHEN A GIRL LOVES A MAN 288

LVIII MARRIAGE LESSONS 293

LIX THE SUPERIOR BUSINESS WOMAN 297

LX NEW IDEALS FOR OLD 301

LXI WHY DIVORCE IS COMMON 305

LXII THE CHILDREN PAY 310

LXIII THE LEARNED PROFESSION OF HOME-MAKING 315

LXIV A FATHER’S INFLUENCE 320

LXV THE RICHES OF POOR CHILDREN 325

LXVI A MAN’S RIGHT TO HIS HOME 330

LXVII DEVOURING FRIENDS 334

LXVIII THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS 338

LXIX PREPAREDNESS FOR OLD AGE 343

_Foreword_

_Dorothy Dix—Her Book_

A FOREWORD BY RICHARD DUFFY

To the accurately estimated millions of readers who are familiar with Dorothy Dix’s understanding and interpretation of the plain facts of everyday life and also its enigmas, it may appear a presumption that one should attempt a foreword of explanation to make clear why a choice of her daily contributions to the press, not only in the United States and Canada, but also in farther regions of the world, should be deemed worthy of the more permanent shelter of book covers. But it becomes at once justifiable when we try to present a true account of the work of “The Little Lady of New Orleans,” as one of her oldest editors calls her. She herself confesses that, among the hundreds of letters she receives each day from men and women, young, adult and aged, there recur the questions: “Are you a real person, or only a newspaper syndicate name?” “Are you a man, or are you a woman?” “Are you married or single?” “Have you ever been married?” “If you have not been married, would you marry?” “If you have been married—and are not now—would you marry again?” “Have you any children? If so—are they boys or girls—and how many?” It must be emphasized that the questions above recorded are not asked by correspondents merely curious, who put the questions just to probe the author of the Dorothy Dix articles. Not at all, these questions are asked in letters revealing the puzzles of life that entangle the very writers who address Dorothy Dix. Before they make the simplest inquiry as to the trustworthiness of Dorothy Dix, they tell their own troubles in the way we all have of saying: “Of course what I have said to you is wholly confidential. Now let me know where you stand—I mean about absolute personal fidelity.” To a hard-boiled business man, or business woman, such a remark seems trite. Yet, we must remember that hard-boiled business persons run to the courts every so often to discover between themselves, at great expense, how personal fidelity, in gush and in fact, sharply contrast.

The self-styled hard-boiled people and the people who pretend they are less sophisticated than they are, look to Dorothy Dix for a way out of all their troubles. These two classes are to be reckoned with, because they are always telling their troubles to some confidant—the less known, the better. But the vast majority of the people who write to Dorothy Dix for counsel and guidance are profoundly sincere and earnest, not so much because they fear to be otherwise, but because they are so firmly persuaded of the sincerity and earnestness of life itself, when they look it square in the face and without pose of any kind. All and any of these correspondents of Dorothy Dix are struggling with their problems of how to make life livable. In the case of the young woman who has a good job and, at the same time, has a good home with her parents, the question arises whether she should marry the man she likes, and who on his part likes her, and then undertake to become a parent herself without a salaried job and without the safeguard of the home provided by her father and mother. On the other side there appears the problem of the young man, who would marry, but for responsibilities, psychological as well as financial, that make him stop, look and listen before he leaves a dependent father and mother unsupported.

We pass to the men and women who are actually married and suddenly discover that they are facing the real and inevitable conflict of life at home as compared with the daily battle of the business world. Some husbands are go-getters, but they do not get anywhere because their wives are shiftless as home managers, or because they are spendthrifts, and would always, without trying, spend twice as much money as any husband has, or can earn. Some wives are the best of helpmates, but are linked to husbands who simply cannot or will not achieve the quiet fame of a weekly pay-envelope which is the rock foundation of “Home Sweet Home.”

Some wives are afflicted with the disease of “social climbing.” They spend their days and nights proving to their husbands that for every dollar earned, it is better to spend two dollars, in order to take a chance at three, by inviting the Smiths to the theatre and to supper afterward. Such wives usually overlook the fact that the Smiths, with whom they would curry favor at great expense, are themselves spending two dollars for every one dollar gained on the principle that it is a good investment to obtain equal social standing with the Joneses.

Also to be encountered in this book are the varied specimens of husbands and wives who have become tired of each other and seek from Dorothy Dix guidance towards a way out of what they consider the morass of marriage. Then, too, we meet the father, or the mother, who is perplexed about the way children grow up nowadays—as tho the way children grew up has not always been a surprise to parents since the days of Romulus and Remus. To sum up, all _dramatis personæ_ in the stupendous play of life, being enacted day in and day out, as we live, are brought on the world’s stage before us, not so much by Dorothy Dix as by themselves in the confidences they repose in her and the disclosures they make about themselves.

Despite this fact there never has been nor will there be anything merely approaching a betrayal of confidence by Dorothy Dix. She talks to the whole world of men and women, and their worries and concerns are so alike that all shadow of individual identity is lost. She talks to them, not from the pedestal of the highbrow, but from the average level of a human being, who herself has fought the grim battle of life—as may be learned from her personal statement, which immediately follows these pages. One of the most distinguished of living American novelists, on being shown a few letters in her day’s mail, asked:

“How many such letters do you receive a month?”

She replied: “It takes me from three to four hours each day to answer my correspondents—and then I have to write my articles besides.”

“Great Scott!” exclaimed the novelist. “You have more plots in a day’s letters than any hard-working novelist could invent in a year.”

But none of these potential plots is available even for the most prolific of story-writers, because they are not “plots” to Dorothy Dix, but sacred testimonies to the help the “Little Lady of New Orleans” has been able to render through many years to her ever-increasing number of friends and confidants.

_Introduction_

MY PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

I have had what people call a hard life. I have been through the depths of poverty and sickness. I have known want and struggle and anxiety and despair. I have always had to work beyond the limit of my strength.

As I look back upon my life, I see it as a battlefield strewn with the wrecks of dead dreams and broken hopes and shattered illusions—a battle in which I always fought with the odds tremendously against me, and which has left me scarred and bruised and maimed and old before my time.

Yet I have no pity for myself; no tears to shed over the past and gone sorrows; no envy for the women who have been spared all that I have gone through.

For I have lived. They have only existed. I have drunk the cup of life down to the very dregs. They have only sipped at the bubbles on the top of it.

I know things they will never know. I see things to which they are blind. It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world.

This of itself is a compensation for many sorrows, but I have more. I have proved myself to myself. I know that I have the strength to endure and the courage to carry on, and that I will not be craven enough to run up the white flag, no matter what other difficulties I may be called upon to meet.

The skeleton at the feast of the woman who has always been happy and prosperous is fear. She becomes panic-stricken when she thinks that she may be called upon to meet trouble; that she may have hardships to endure; that her soul may be torn with suffering. She suffers with apprehension at the thought of poverty, and wonders how she could endure to go shabby and do without the things to which she is accustomed. She wonders helplessly what she would do if she had to earn her own living.

_I am not afraid of poverty_ because I have been poor and I know that poverty has its consolations and brings you pleasures that money cannot buy. Nor am I afraid to support myself. I have earned my bread and butter for many years. I know the joy of work and I know that to a woman, just the satisfaction of knowing that she is self-supporting turns her crust into angel’s food.

None of the fears with which happy women torture themselves upon occasion have any terrors for me. I know them for the bogies they are, and know, too, that they fly away before the person who does not cringe before them.

Often I am tempted to envy the woman who has always had some strong man to stand between her and the world, some man whose tenderness and love has guarded and protected her. But I am consoled for not being a clinging vine when I wonder what the vine would do and think how broken it would be if the sturdy oak on which it hangs were laid low.

I have learned in the great University of Hard Knocks a philosophy that no woman who has had an easy life ever acquires. I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading to-morrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us. I put that dread from me because experience has taught me that when the time comes that I so fear, the strength and wisdom to meet it will be given me.

Little annoyances have no longer the power to affect me. After you have seen your whole edifice of happiness topple and crash in ruins about you, it never matters to you again that a servant forgets to put the doilies under the finger bowls or the cook spills the soup.

I have learned not to expect too much of people and so I can still get happiness out of the friend who isn’t quite true to me, or the acquaintance who gossips about me, and I can even find pleasure in the society of those whose motives I see through.

Above all I have acquired a sense of humor, because there were so many things over which I had either to laugh or cry. And when a woman can joke over her troubles instead of having hysterics, nothing can ever hurt her much again.

So I do not regret the hardships I have known because through them I have touched life at every point. I have lived. And it was worth the price I had to pay.

DOROTHY DIX.

_Dorothy Dix—Her Book_

HOW A HUSBAND LIKES TO BE TREATED

Altho marriage has been the chief business of woman since Eve pulled off the first wedding in the Garden of Eden, women have not yet mastered the first indispensable principle of success in their profession. Millions of women have been married. Hundreds of thousands of women marry annually, and yet, as a class, women do not know how to treat a husband.

Here and there is a shining exception to this rule, and the result is an inspiring picture of domestic bliss. But the great majority of women still go stumbling along into misery and divorce because they have not had the wit to find out how to rub man’s fur the right way, and make him purr under their hands.

In a word, women fail to strike just the right note in their attitude towards their husbands. Sometimes they treat them better than they deserve. Sometimes worse, but seldom do they treat the men just as the men would like to be treated.

Perhaps the real reason that women fail in this most important particular is because they make the mistake of treating a husband as if he were a rational human being, and the same sort of an individual inside of the home circle that he is outside of it.

Never was there a greater error. The John Smith to whom a woman is married is no more the John Smith of the business world than he is some other man.

The John Smith, who is a lawyer, or a doctor, or a grocer in the outer world, is a big, strong, broad, self-reliant man who looks at everything in a large way, and is just, and tolerant, and even stoical in meeting the vicissitudes of life. The woman who marries him has perceived all of these qualities, and loved him for them, and she naturally expects him to exhibit these characteristics in home life.

Fatal blunder. John Smith, the business man, may be dealt with on a plain, sensible, aboveboard platform, but John Smith the husband, has to be jollied, and cajoled, and petted, and wheedled along the road he should go, if there is anything doing in the domestic felicity line in the household of which he is the alleged head.

Now the majority of husbands average up quite as well as the majority of wives, but even when a man is really good, and true, and strong, experience teaches his wife that there are three ways in which he likes her to treat him. They are:

(a) Like a baby.

(b) Like a demigod.

No matter how big and strong a man is, nor how many other men he bosses, he wants his wife to treat him as if he were a delicate infant who had to be petted, and nursed, and dandled, and chucked under the chin. There isn’t a man living whose secret ideal of a perfect wife isn’t a woman who puts the buttons in his shirt, and lays out his collar and tie in the morning, who has his slippers toasting on the radiator when he comes home of an evening, and who cooks just the particular thing he likes to eat, with her own hands.

Talk about your women who can hand out intellectual companionship! Produce your living pictures! Exhibit your paragons of virtue! They are simply not one, two, three with the wise dame who pets and fusses over her lord and master. And it isn’t because the man really wants his wife to wait on him. That doesn’t enter into it at all. He’s just like the three-year-old who howls for mama to put on his shoes or butter his bread when there are seven nurses standing around to do it.

Men are babyish in wanting their wives to show them off. The expression on the face of little Tommy while his fond mother is telling the smart things that he said, is exactly the same expression that is on Tommy’s father’s face while his wife is bragging about how he organized a trust, or won a big lawsuit, or was elected judge.

Wise,—oh, a daughter of Solomon is the woman who puts her husband through his paces for the benefit of company. Matrimony is one long, glad sweet song in the household of the lady who acts as a showman for hubby.

Consider also a man when he is sick, or thinks he is sick. How does he want to be treated then? Like a baby. He wants his wife to sit by his bed, and hold his hand, and weep tears of sympathy, and if she doesn’t believe he is going to die every time he has a headache, he considers her a cold, heartless icicle and doubts her affection.

Therefore, the very first principle in treating a husband is to treat him as if he was your littlest baby, and if you do, he will gurgle, and coo just as your two-year-old does when you smother him with kisses, and asks: “‘Oose de most booflest boy on earf, an’ mudders itty, pitty wonder, and world beater?”

Secondly, every husband likes to be treated as if he were a demigod.

Men won’t admit it, but in his soul every husband feels that he has conferred such an inestimable boon upon his wife by marrying her that she can never really repay him, anyway, but that it is up to her to keep busy on the job. Therefore, the least she can do is to act grateful.

The real reason why there is a continual conflict in most families over the money question is not because husbands are stingy, but because a man likes to dole the money out, piece by piece, so that the woman who gets it may have a living exhibition of his generosity.

When a man complains about how extravagant his wife is, and how much her hat and dress cost, it doesn’t mean that he begrudges her a single garment or the price thereof. On the contrary, it is his way of boasting to the world of how prosperous he is, and how well he provides for his family. Stupid, indeed, is the woman who does not comprehend this, and who does not keep her glad rags hanging in public, so to speak, and continually beat upon the cymbal, and chant pæans of praise about how good her husband is to provide her with her lovely clothes.

Nor is this as silly as it sounds. The average man gets practically nothing out of his labor, after he has supported his family, but his board and clothes, and it is pretty discouraging to spend your life toiling for those who take all that you can give, and make no sign of appreciation in return. So it is not strange that husbands like their wives to treat them as a beneficent providence from whom all blessings flow.

Husbands like to be treated as good fellows.

If the average married man could put up one prayer more fervent than all the rest it would be this: “Lord, send me a wife who laughs, and a home that isn’t an understudy to a funeral parlor!”

But his prayer isn’t often answered.

Now one of the great reasons why so many husbands and wives make shipwreck of their lives together is because a man is always seeking for happiness, while a woman is on a perpetual still hunt for trouble. When anything uncomfortable happens to a man he tries to forget it, to put it behind him, to get it out of his thoughts, even if he has to drown it in drink. When a misfortune befalls a woman she gloats over it. She keeps pressing her finger on every sore until she makes a raging abscess of it. Then she goes on a jag of tears.

The result of this feminine peculiarity is that the average home is not a cheerful place, nor is the average wife a joyous companion, and that is why a very large number of husbands seek their amusements elsewhere, and with other people. The greatest danger that menaces domesticity is that so many wives are killjoys.

The question is often asked—why do men, who are penurious and niggardly to their families, and who never pay a household bill without grumbling, spend money so lavishly on their vices? The answer is easy. A man’s home is dull, and the money that his family costs him gives him no fillip of pleasure. The other does. The home has been made to mean to him nothing but hard duty, ungilded by any joy. The opening of champagne for chorus girls is to the tune of gaiety and laughter. Therefore, he is willing to pay for one and begrudges paying for the other.

Once I was listening to a group of intelligent people discuss the most desirable quality in a wife. They named the usual standard virtues until suddenly one man burst out in a voice surcharged with genuine emotion.

“I tell you,” he said, “what a man wants in a wife more than anything else is a cheerful companion. Goodness? Bah! All women, at least the kind a man marries, are good. Economy? A man likes to spend money on his wife. Amiability? Who wants a simpering doll always about? Domesticity? Stuff and nonsense. A man’s stomach isn’t the most important part of him. Besides there is a good restaurant on every corner, if he is bound to gorge himself on food.

“I tell you what a man wants is cheerfulness in his wife. He wants to come home at night to somebody who will meet him with a smile, somebody who has got a lot of bright little things to tell him, and who can make him laugh, somebody who is willing to put on her prettiest dress and go out with him if he wants to go to any place of amusement.

“He doesn’t want to come home to a woman who is sodden with tears, or who is running over with the accumulated worries of the day that she dumps on him, who is full of her own and other people’s hard luck stories, and who looks like a chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah.”

Of course, whether a wife is melancholy or not does not, from an ethical standpoint, alter her husband’s duty to her. He should be strong enough to love and cherish her no matter how lacrimose she is; but the martyr’s crown is a piece of headgear that is distinctly unfashionable at the present time, and most men duck wearing it. Wherefore, it behooves the Amalgamated Order of Doleful Wives to cheer up, and try to be more lively companions to their husbands if they don’t want those gentlemen to stray off in search of ladies with sunnier dispositions.

As a matter of fact, men are, emotionally, very primitive creatures with a few simple domestic wants. They desire to be petted, and jollied, and looked up to by their wives, and then they want to be treated as good fellows. They want their wives to be chums with them, and not reforming institutions, or lecture bureaus.

The average man simply pines for cheerful comradeship from his wife. He wants her to enjoy the things that he does, to like the people he likes, to amuse herself with the things that divert him. He wants to hear her laugh, to see her eyes sparkle, and for her to treat him as on a par with herself, as if they were joyous fellow sinners together, instead of her being a living reproof to him as a poor low-browed creature, with musical-comedy tastes that make her shudder.

Yet do you ever notice the ordinary married couple out together? It is one of the most piteous sights on earth. The man is spending his money trying to give his wife a good time, and she meets his noble efforts with the rasping qualities of a crosscut saw. That is what gives eternal pungency to the old Weber and Fields joke about the man who, when asked if he was going to take his wife with him on a trip to Paris, replied: “No, I am going on a pleasure excursion.”

Of course whether it is any more a woman’s place to get along with her husband than it is his to get along with her is another fight, which I am not trying to referee here. So also is the question of how a wife likes to be treated. What I have tried to show is how a husband would like his wife to pull the wool over his eyes and put on the velvet glove before she tries to manage him—because men really enjoy being bamboozled by women who turn out a nice artistic job. What they object to is not being henpecked, but the raw way in which their wives do it.

CHARM

Over and over again girls ask me these questions: What is charm? What is the secret of the attraction that some women have for men?

What is the “come-hither” look in the eye that some women have that makes every man who beholds it get up and follow them?

Why do some girls always have hosts of beaux flocking about them, while other girls just as good-looking, just as clever, just as good dancers, just as anxious to please, never have a date or a single sweetheart to bless themselves with?

And to all of these questions I have to answer, sadly and disconsolately, that I do not know. I have to give up the conundrum, which is perhaps the riddle that the Sphinx, who is partly a woman, has brooded over through the centuries in her desert solitude, without ever being able to solve it.

In Barrie’s delightful play, “What Every Woman Knows,” Maggie’s brothers, discussing her with the brutal frankness with which brothers approach the subject of a sister, agreed that she wasn’t young, nor brilliant, and that she was homely, yet all the men were after her. Finally one of the brothers said: “But she’s got that damned charm.” And that was that.

When a woman has that damned charm she can snap her fingers in the face of flappers and living pictures, and marry as early and as often as she pleases as is witnessed by the many fat, pie-faced women we all know who have had two, and three, or more, husbands apiece, and who still have a waiting list in case anything untoward and fatal should happen to the gentlemen to whom they are at present united in the holy bonds of matrimony.

But what is this charm, what is this rabbit’s foot that some lucky women carry, and others do not? To say that it is personality is to attempt to explain one mystery by another mystery, for we do not know in what personal magnetism consists, or by what power one individual draws us, while another repulses us.

We know that it isn’t beauty, because the best lookers among girls are seldom the most popular, and men who profess to worship beauty are generally content to adore it from a safe distance, and show no disposition to marry it. It is notorious that beauties seldom make good matches. Nor does charm consist of intelligence. Being a highbrow booms no woman’s stock, socially or matrimonially, while a witty woman cuts her throat with her own tongue.

To be a spellbinder is for a girl’s fairy godmother to have wished a curse instead of a blessing upon her, for no woman is more anathema to men than the human phonograph. Even dancing, chief of accomplishments in these jazzy days when it is of more profit for a woman to have her brains in her heels than in her head, is but a passing attraction, while amiability and a sweet nature, woman’s traditional one best bet, are like a sticking plaster, potent to hold a man after marriage, but of small value in luring him into it.

Undoubtedly, charm in its perfection is a gift of the gods, but happily, in these days, when nature proves a cruel stepmother who is so mean and stingy that she does not give us all that is coming to us, we have learned to circumvent the lady. No woman need be as ugly as God made her, nor as unattractive as she was born. Drug-store complexions can put the inherited ones to the blush, and any girl who is willing to take the trouble can acquire a line of lures and graces that will make any bona fide siren tremble for her job. To the girl, then, who wishes to acquire charm, and who especially wishes to attract men, I would say, first, stress your femininity.

I don’t mean be namby-pamby and weepy and dish-raggy, without any backbone. That type of woman has gone out of fashion as completely as bustles and hoopskirts. No man now would be bored with the sort of perfect lady his grandmother was. But the eternal feminine remains still the eternal attraction for men, and the more womanly a woman is, the gentler, the tenderer, the sweeter, the more she appeals to men. If you will notice when a man speaks of the woman he loves, he invariably calls her “little” no matter if she is six feet high and weighs 200 pounds. What he means is that she gives him the reaction of depending upon him, of looking up to him, and that in some subtle way she flatters his vanity by giving him the sense of masculine superiority.

You never see an aggressive, double-fisted woman, who fights her way as a man does, get anywhere. And in his soul every man adores frills and furbelows, and likes to see women dolled up. That is why girls make such a terrible mistake when they ape mannish ways, and wear mannish clothes. When a girl puts on knickerbockers she throws her trump card into the discard.

To the girl who wishes to acquire charm I would also whisper this secret: Make of yourself a mirror in which other people look upon themselves. Especially let men see a flattering reflection of themselves in your eyes. Can your own personal vanity. Listen with bated breath while other people tell you of their exploits, but never mention your own. Enthuse over their cars, their dogs. Marvel at their adventures. Sympathize with their disappointments. Give the glad hand to their successes, and you will be universally regarded as a woman of perfect taste, wonderful insight, profound judgment, a brilliant talker and a companion of whom one could never weary. It is the tireless listeners, and not the endless talkers, whom men take out to dinner.

To the girl who wishes to develop charm I would likewise earnestly recommend an intensive course of self-analysis. I would say to her: “Study yourself. Find out what you can wear and what you cannot wear. Find out the things that you can do and get away with, and the things that you cannot do without making yourself appear either a dumbbell or a figure of fun. Then, having ascertained what are your best points, turn the spotlight on them. Emphasize them until you make everybody sit up and take notice, so that even casual acquaintances will remember you as the girl who always wears pink, or the girl who always dresses in black, or the girl with the Mona Lisa smile, or the girl who is so jolly and such a cut-up, or the girl who listens to you with such an absorbed expression on her face that you could go on talking to her forever. I would urge girls to try to be themselves, plus, as they say in business, and to raise whatever charms of body, or mind, or heart, they have to its _n_th power. That is the best way to acquire personality, the “something different” about us that sets us apart from every other human being, instead of our being just one of the herd.

Don’t be a copycat. Don’t understudy the mannerisms of another girl just because she happens to be popular. Imitation airs and graces have about as much sparkle to them as imitation diamonds. Besides, you never can make a go of it. You can’t put on another woman’s characteristics any more than you can her clothes, and make them seem as if they were your own birthday suit. They are always a grotesque misfit. Charm has to be made to order and cut to the measurement of the individual. That is why one girl may do bold, outrageous things and everybody only shrugs his shoulders and laughs at her, while another girl is sent to Coventry for not doing half so much. That is why some women always have a masculine shoulder offered for them to weep upon, while men tell other women not to be fools whenever they shed a tear.

So the trick is for the girl to find out what her own class is and qualify for the blue ribbon in that instead of trying to force her way into a bunch of prize winners where she doesn’t belong and where she will be thrown out by the judges. Yet many girls make the mistake of doing this very thing. A quiet, serious-minded, mouse-like little girl observes that some gay and dashing girl, who has quicksilver in her veins and over whose lips laughter bubbles as spontaneously as a mountain spring, is much admired and sought after and is the life of the party wherever she goes.

“Aha! Vivacity is what makes a girl popular,” says the demure one to herself. “I will also be sprightly, and merry, and make a hit.”

So she tries to imitate the high spirits of the gay girl, but she can’t do it. Her home-made vivacity is as flat as home-brew beer beside imported champagne. Instead of being bright, she is loud. Instead of laughing, she giggles. Instead of being sprightly, she jumps around like a monkey on a stick. She is so afraid she won’t talk enough that she chatters incessantly, and instead of amusing people she bores them to death.

Yet the very girl who is such a failure as a live wire could have charmed every one if only she had given a master performance of girlish sweetness, and gentleness, and quietness. She could have been a great success if she had remained the shrinking violet that nature made her, but she was a rank failure as a gaudy sunflower.

Then there is the big, Amazonian woman who tries to be cute and cunning, because she sees some baby doll getting the glad hand when she curls up on sofas, and sits on one foot, and perches on the edges of tables, and who only succeeds in looking like a performing elephant instead of a playful kitten when she performs these stunts. And there is the woman without an inch of funny bone in her whole anatomy who tries to tell good stories because she sees some jolly woman raconteur set the table in a roar at dinner parties, and who wonders why people burst into tears instead of into peals of mirth when she recites her carefully memorized jokes.

They couldn’t fill other women’s rôles, yet the big woman could have made us worship her as a goddess if she had stayed on her pedestal instead of coming down and trying to do double somersaults in the ring. We would have listened eagerly enough to intelligent talk from a serious thinker who didn’t try to be funny, for Heaven knows we get tired enough of amateur jokesmiths who think we want to be perpetually tickled in the ribs. Believe me, girls, there is much wisdom in the old proverb that advises the shoemaker to stick to his last. We are most admirable when we are what nature made us with the aid of a few little arts and embellishments to throw the original model up into higher relief. So I counsel you to make the most of yourselves. Abandon the foolish attempt of trying to make yourselves over into a poor copy of some woman who is admired. Charm isn’t standardized. It has a million forms, and every woman should illustrate her own particular version of it.

After all what we call charm is largely a matter of personality and the girl who wishes to cultivate that elusive something that we call personality does well to pay much attention to her dress. This sounds like superfluous advice to the sex whose brains are mostly cut on the bias and shirred in the middle, and which is more concerned over the hang of a skirt than it is over the state of its immortal soul. It is not too much to say that three-fourths of women’s thoughts and interest in life and heart-felt desires and envies are concentrated upon clothes, and the marvel always is that they can put so much effort on a subject and get such poor results.

For the great majority of women only think of dress in terms of fashion, and they follow the mode of the moment as sheep follow their leader over a wall. They wear blue or purple, pink or green, short skirts or long skirts, tight ones or full ones, without any reference to their complexions or whether their ankles are sylphlike or like the legs of a piano, or whether they are living skeletons, or have featherbed figures. The result is that thousands upon thousands of women look as if their worst enemy had bought their clothes, and their hats are a premeditated insult to their faces. But they go their way, serene and happy, having done the worst they could by themselves, but blissful in the knowledge that they are wearing what everybody else is wearing. Apparently it never enters the average woman’s head that by clothing herself in the feminine uniform of the hour she makes herself indistinguishable in the mob, or that she could call attention to herself by breaking away from it, and dressing to suit her own particular type. Still less does it occur to her that her clothes offer her an invaluable mode of self-expression, and that by them she can emphasize her good points and camouflage her defects.

Yet every moving picture, every play she sees, offers a girl an object lesson in the psychology of clothes that she does not heed. She never asks herself why the innocent, trusting maiden, too artless for her own good, always wears a white muslin and a blue sash; why the ingenue is always a mass of fluffy ruffles; why the betrayed heroine always wears a slinky black dress; why the adventuress is clothed in crimson and spangles; why the vamp invariably wears long jade earrings, and a quart of beads, and very little else.

Yet astute stage managers have found that the surest way to make an audience visualize a woman in a certain way is to have her dress the part. A girl might, of course, be as innocent in a crimson dress as a white one; a woman might be as heartbroken in a pink silk and lace negligee as she is in a bedraggled black alpaca, but it would take a long argument to convince us of it, and we wouldn’t weep nearly as freely over her woes as we do when we get an eyeful of her in the clothes that tell us at once just what a poor, innocent, persecuted heroine she is.

Surely this should suggest to every girl the wisdom of retiring to her closet, and having a heart-to-heart session with her wardrobe, and a vivisection party with her character, and thereby try to find out how to dress her soul as well as her body, so as best and most effectively to press-agent her individuality, so to speak.

If she is of the bold and dashing type, let her flaunt herself like a sunflower in daring costumes and flaming colors, but if she is of the quiet and gentle sort, soft fabrics, chiffons and laces and pastel shades belong to her, and make her look like the traditional modest violet that every man dreams of securing as a wife. Let the girl who is flat-chested and athletic rejoice in her sport clothes. That is her note, and brings out a certain piquant boyishness which is her greatest attraction. But let the girl who is plump, with gracious curves, make the most of her femininity by decking herself out in the frilliest frocks that she can find. Each will lose in charm if she swaps her plumage for the other’s.

Dangling ornaments, floating ribbons and jingling bracelets belong to the gay and foolish and frivolous, but they detract from the dignity of the stately, thoughtful, serious-minded woman. A tailor-made suit is equal to a certificate of virtue, and when a girl is applying for a job a plain, dark-colored suit will do more to land her the position than a gilt-edged reference. Nobody ever believes that a girl in a low-necked, no-sleeved frock can ever be a competent business woman. She doesn’t look it. Every woman knows that her eyes seem twice as blue if she has a blue lining to her hat, and that she can turn a spotlight on her every freckle by wearing a spotted dress. In the same way she can bring out her characteristics by the way she dresses. If she wishes to emphasize her cuteness, she can do it by dressing like a baby doll. If she wishes to be thought a goddess, she can add to her divinity by long-trailing robes. If she wishes to be thought a good sport and treated as a pal by men, sport clothes are hers, while if domesticity is her long suit, she can turn the trick by wearing ruffled little white aprons at home. So study your type, girls, and dress the part, if you want to make the most of the attractions with which nature has endowed you.

III

THE ORDINARY WOMAN

I wish that I had the distributing of some of the Carnegie medals for heroes. I would give one to just the Ordinary Woman. It is true that she never manned a lifeboat in a stormy sea, or plunged into a river to save a drowning person. It is true that she never stopped a runaway horse, or dashed into a burning building, or gave any other spectacular exhibition of courage.

She has only stood at her post thirty, or forty, or fifty years, fighting sickness and poverty and loneliness, and disappointment so quietly, with such a Spartan fortitude that the world has never noticed her achievements. Yet, in the presence of the Ordinary Woman, the battle-scarred veteran, with his breast covered with medals signifying valor, may well stand uncovered before one braver than he.

There is nothing high and heroic in her appearance. She is just a commonplace woman, plainly dressed, with a tired face and work-worn hands—the kind of woman that you meet a hundred times a day upon the street without ever giving her a second glance, still less saluting her as a heroine. Nevertheless, as much as the bravest soldier, she is entitled to the cross of the Legion of Honor for distinguished gallantry on the Battlefield of Life.

Years and years ago, when she was fresh and young, and gay, and light-hearted, she was married. Her head, as is the case with most girls, was full of dreams. Her husband was to be a Prince Charming, always tender and considerate and loving, shielding her from every care and worry. Life itself was to be a fairy tale.

One by one the dreams fell away. The husband was a good man, but he grew indifferent to her before long. He ceased to notice when she put on a fresh ribbon. He never paid her the little compliments for which a woman’s soul hungers. He never gave her a kiss or a caress, and their married life sank into a deadly monotony that had no romance to brighten it, no joy or love to lighten it.

Day after day she sewed and cooked and cleaned and mended to make a comfortable home for a man who did not even give her the poor pay of a few words of appreciation. At his worst he was cross and querulous. At his best he was silent, and would gobble his food like a hungry animal and subside into his paper, leaving her to spend a dull and monotonous evening after a dull and monotonous day.

The husband was not one of the fortunate few who have the gift of making money. He worked hard, but opportunity does not smile on every man, and the wolf was never very far away from their door.

Women know the worst of poverty. It is the wife, who has the spending of the insufficient family income, who learns all the bitter ways of scrimping and paring and saving. The husband must present a decent appearance, for policy’s sake, when he goes to business; certain things are necessities for the children; and so the heaviest of all the deprivations fall upon the woman who stays at home and strives to make one dollar do the work of five.

That is the way of the Ordinary Woman; and what sacrifices she makes, what tastes she crucifies, what longings for pretty things and dainty things she smothers, not even her own family guess. They think it is an eccentricity that makes her choose the neck of the chicken and the hard end of the loaf and to stay at home from any little outing. Ah, if they only knew!

For each of her children she trod the Gethsemane of woman, only to go through that slavery of motherhood which the woman endures who is too poor to hire competent nurses. For years and years she never knew what it was to have a single night’s unbroken sleep. The small hours of the morning found her walking the colic, or nursing the croup, or covering restless little sleepers, or putting water to thirsty little lips.

There was no rest for her, day or night. There was always a child in her arms or clinging to her skirts. Oftener than not she was sick and nerve-worn and weary almost to death, but she never failed to rally to the call of “Mother!” as a good soldier rallies to his battle-cry.

Nobody called her brave, and yet, when one of the children came down with malignant diphtheria, she braved death a hundred times, in bending over the little sufferer, without one thought of danger. And when the little one was laid away under the sod, she who had loved most was the first to gather herself together and take up the burden of life for the others.

The supreme moment of the Ordinary Woman’s life, however, came when she educated her children above herself and lifted them out of her sphere. She did this with deliberation. She knew that in sending her bright boy and talented girl off to college she was opening up to them paths in which she could not follow; she knew that the time would come when they would look upon her with pitying tolerance or contempt, or perhaps—God help her!—be ashamed of her.

But she did not falter in her self-sacrifice. She worked a little harder, she denied herself a little more, to give them the advantages that she never had. In this she was only like millions of other Ordinary Women who are toiling over cooking-stoves, slaving at sewing-machines, pinching and economizing to educate and cultivate their children—digging with their own hands the chasm that will separate them almost as much as death itself would.

Wherefore I say the Ordinary Woman is the real heroine of life.

TEACH THE CHILDREN TO LOVE FATHER

Are you teaching your children to love and admire their father? Do you ceaselessly point out to your children their father’s good qualities? Do you hold their father up as a hero before your children’s eyes? Do you teach your children to appreciate their father? If you do not, you are not giving your husband a fair deal, nor a run for his money. Fatherhood calls for just as many sacrifices as motherhood does. The only coin in which these can be repaid is affection and gratitude, and if he is defrauded of these he is poor indeed.

From the time the first baby is born the average man becomes literally the slave of his family. He sells himself into bondage so that his children may live soft; that they may have advantages that he never had in his youth; that they may enjoy luxuries he never knew. He works overtime and grows prematurely old and bent, that his boys may go to college and belong to smart clubs and have automobiles, and that his daughters may attend fashionable schools, and dress like fashion plates, and go in the right circles.

It is father who stays at home and works through hot summers and cold winters, when the family goes to Europe. It is father who wears the shabbiest clothes. It is father who has the worst room and the smallest closet space in the home. The percentage of money that father spends on himself and in gratifying his own personal tastes and desires is negligible. Virtually all the money he has earned by a lifetime of hard toil has been lavished on his family.

Whether this pays or not, whether all of this labor and anxiety and self-denial have been worthless or not, depends altogether on his children’s attitude toward him. If they love him; if they are grateful to him; if they appreciate what he has done for them, it is the best investment that a man ever made, and it makes him richer than any millionaire. But if his children are indifferent and callous; if they take all that he has done for them as no more than their due, and without even a “thank you”; if they see in him nothing but a shabby little man who hasn’t been particularly successful as a moneymaker, then all his life work goes for nothing. His sacrifices are without reward. He is bankrupt in heart.

Now, the attitude of children toward their father is almost entirely determined by their mother; and whether they look upon him as a superior being to be adored and worshiped, or merely as a cash register that they can punch whenever they want any money, depends altogether upon what she has taught them. There are women who teach their children to hate and fear their father by making him an ogre to them. When the children are bad the little culprits are always threatened with what their father will do to them. The mother thus makes the father the hanging judge who inflicts punishment on the small sinners.

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Dorothy Dix—her bookChapter I: Part 1

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