The Daily Independent

Caroline Chatfield Says

Husbands have as many pockets in their lives as they have in their suits. Wives have only one. This is why they howl when they lose their husbands.

A gentleman of the jury would like to know why it is that so many more wives than husbands set up wolf howls over their marriage disappointments. He's quite sure that as many husbands as wives are disappointed, suffer and are sad when love lies a-bleeding. Thus he concludes that men are better sports in defeat than are women.

Maybe husbands are as frequently disappointed in wives as wives in husbands, but the men don't take it so hard. A man's life, like his suit of clothes is full of pockets, big and little, round and square and when he reaches into one and meets with disappointment, he has a dozen others to forage in. The poor wives have only one pocket in their lives and if they reach in and find it empty they are desolated. It's the same old story that Lord Byron put in a quick pill dose:

"Love is of man's life a thing apart
'Tis woman's whole existence."

When a man discovers that the little woman is not the person he took her to be he has a swell time finding diversion from his disappointment. The field is large: business, hobbies, men friends and if he is too keenly cut there will soon be some women friends and perhaps a bottle or two. It isn't his nature to sit down and grieve about what he can't help. It isn't his nature to talk volubly or weep copiously over his sorrow. He goes out to look for gladness.

But lo the poor wife is whipped when she discovers her loss. Her sense of humor goes out like a light. She can think of nothing else, talk of nothing else and when a female's thoughts are sad they automatically open the faucet. Tears and talk are her meat and drink day and night. She's been pretty dependent upon that husband and still is; for support, for approval, for affection, for appeasement of her vanity. If he doesn't come through nobody or nothing can divert her until she has talked herself black in the face and cried her eyes red.

Besides she has no office to go to where she meets many men of many minds, to say nothing of some swishing petticoats. She has no planning with the partner to beat the competitor, no business trips to make new connections and foster old ones. It isn't her nature to go out and hunt up diversion. It isn't her nature to drown her sorrow and try to be gay. She's born a griever and she grieves.

It's a hard hearted man that resents the wolf howls of the women when they stand by the corpses of dead loves.

CAROLINE CHATFIELD.

Problems of general interest submitted by readers will be discussed in this column. Letters unsuitable for publication will be answered personally, provided they contain stamped, self-addressed envelopes. All names are held in confidence. Write Miss Chatfield, in care of this newspaper.