LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT

Evening Star, Issue 18817, 16 December 1924, Page 10

LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT

TRIFLES THAT MAR HAPPY MARRIAGE. The little things of life! Years ngo, when I was a cub reporter in the Divorce Courts, young, yet woefully surfeited with the debris of shattered romances, an undefended action, ono dull and wearisome afternoon, infused into the court a strange, an inexplicable atmosphere of sadness (writes Andrew Soutar, in the ‘bunclay Chronicle’). . , Counsel representing' the aggrieved husband hold in his hand a tiny mauve envelope which contained the ornng wife s note of confession. It was all the evidence the judge required to justify his severing the marriage bonds. * It seems a silly litt-lo tJnns, ( salt * counsel, toving with the letter. “It is the silly little things of life that, make or mar ocr Jiappinoss,” said the judge, moved ■ to sentiment, probably by the pitying smile on counsel's face. _ _ Jn the majority of cases it is the silly jltoie rocks on which the domestic ship is smoked, not the towering clitfs with their beetling crags. Supreme magnanimity does not lie in tho forgiving of a great offence, I but the tolerating of little failings and I irritations. Tact in a woman is more precious than ; jfeood lonics; -thoughtfulness in a husband : (hi so-called little things) endears him to d wife when achievement and social advancement would leave her cold. tittle things—little courtesies, hitlo marks of sympathy and understanding--leave an indelible impress on the mind ' when other favors of seemingly vaster ; import, but. lacking spontaneity, aro forgotten within a work. Few men and | women care to admit that they attach sig- , jrifleance to the little, things, because, fear : of being dubbed sentimentalist is very real; hut there aro few who do not I cthormh tho memory of some minor act of ; thoughtfnines?. ■WIPE’S PLEA. When Oscar Wilde was being conducted from prison to attend hi# bankruptcy proceedings ho had to wait on a railway station between his warders. City workers from tho suburbs recognised tho fallen idol as he was standing there, his hands manacled; somc_ of them jeered, hut one man, remembering the genius of the •'Lord of Language,” raised his hat in sympathy 1 When he came to write his tragic memoirs, Wilde recalled that simple act: “Some men,” ho wrote, “have gone straight to heaven for less than that.” In married life men (and women) arc prone to take things for granted. Romance for them ends with possession. 1 have heard it said that no man understands a woman in iho morning ; 1 have known very few who tried. Among tho annr(yf letters received from readers last week there was one from <i woman whoso heart was obviously pining for just these flit-tie acts of thoughtfulness which make all the difference between love triumphant and love in tatters. “ Do write an article for selfish husbands,” she pleaded. “It aiwuses me to lead about restless women, because tho average middle-class woman lias no chance to be restless. No servants, the children to look after, meals to cook, and generally $, selfish man to valet! I do not care to leave my children of an evening, and night after mght when they have gone to bed ; I sit alono, for my husband goes out to jplay cards. I am still young, yet when I ask if we can’t entertain a. little I am : £dld that wo can’t afford it!” SLATRIMONIAL AIDS. A little further on i “ Oh, I feel'll'. would J)0 happiness indeed if my husband were to sit at homo with mo one night.” : Rut there aro thoughtless wives also—j wives who dismiss tho little things of 1 life as belonging to romantic youth, and \ having no place in everyday life. There iAte wives who mako themselves house{keepers from the day they return from ’the honeymoon 5 they tako so much pride ; sn being housekeepers that they have no j jatienca with sentiment, j "While a husband may like to fed that j Ha household is well managed, he will pet | goore happiness out of a pocketful of bills j and a wife who never forgets how she lesttractcd him to her in the beginning. ' The most happily-married couple 1 ever "met were an artist and his wife; they were ■playing the lovers far up into middle age, ior each had a sense of humor, each ; studied the little things that might appeal j to the other. Rut even they had their mo.ments when “ sameness ’- and routine I.threatened, and it was then that they inindulged an eccentricity as an antidote. STATION" COMEDY. They lived in tho suburbs, am! they would agree to go to town by different trains. On the platform at Victoria 1m would recognise her in tho crowd, raise ids hat, and "mako her acquaintance.” It might have been their first meeting. He would propose a little dinner at. some quiet restaurant in Kolio, or a theatre or music-hall , . . Played the lover all tho while, and —well, it was foolish perhaps, hut they derived an immense amount of joy ont of it, even if ho was seized by a station policeman one night, while the chuckling wife was asked; "Is this fellow annoying you. madam?” There's a typo of wife who might be classed among the "red flannel” women. "Void of imagination. Satisfied that the ring on her finger binds tho man to her. A woman who lost her taste for dainty frocks and elegant lioso and aromatic powder after sho began housekeeping, feat woman encourages ncglectfulncss in ter husband. What man complains of his ]wifo'e extravagance in dress if she dresses topic 3s9 him? The “rod flannel” wife develops a red : flannel mind and tastes; sho’s too tired I to change her dress of an evening if ; “there’s nobody coming to see ns” ; she’s 1 “too tired to go out, too tired to talk about anything save tho hardships a wife has to endure if she isn’t married to a fat bank balance. The husband is only j too glad, of an excuse to slip away with • his male friends. I I Study tho little things of life and the , big troubles lose all their forbidding as- | ■ pect when they come along. In a little ! Village near hero there is a man of middle age who is never without a smile. : He has never achieved anything about which the world will write, although tho great wish of his youth was that ho might travel and see. tho world. And ho married a woman who shared that longing .with him. Tho places they would visit —Egypt, China, Japan, tho United States, A VILLAGE SCENE. “Happy,” ho said to me, ono night. .’“"Nona happier than we. And because we always studied the little things. Sho never gave me room to grumble, always kept me thinking I was mighty lucky to have got bsr, and if I didn’t value her I aa I ought there’d be heaps who would, j Tbe day after wo married wo set our (minds on travelling, and we’ve always J talked about it as though it were a second ! honeymoon wo wore going on.” I Since that conversation ho and I have often talked of places in the far corners 1 of the world. If I mention any port in I which I have "anchored I'll wager ho can , tell me all about it. “ Colombo 1 Do you ' know the Gallo Face Hotel?” “Singn- ■ pare! I suppose you stayed at Rallies?” “Yokohama! Stayed On tho Bluff, I’ll bet?” You would think that the fellow had been all over the East, and yet he hasn’t been outside tho village. As I go to tho post with this to-night I shall pass his little house in the quaint village street. And “Lady,” the young Alsatian, who has come to carry on the broken companionship with “Jack,” the terrier, will halt at his garden gate, and fling np her head inquiringly. There will be a light in the bedroom, ; fh« window of which is always wide open, and wo shall hear tho man who always studied the little things—we shall hear him Beading aloud to the wile who always j studied the little things: he will be readf ing of the East, of Egypt and Japan, of fall tho wonder places they would have | Visited in the fulness of time if tuberhadn’t obtruded itself .and insisted

that sho should glimpse them only through an open window the while her husband reads aloud. ... Yes, it’s tho little things that count—the little tendernesses,' the little acts of grace that are as the keystone of the bridge across which wo travel from one life to another.