MAKING LOVE GROW!

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19221, 9 January 1926, Page 6 (Supplement)

MAKING LOVE GROW!

We expect a lot of marriage, we women, says an exchange correspondent. We think it is a fairy tab where Prince Charming; is for ever kneeling adoringly at his Cinderella's feet. We have fcund the plant of love and potted it for our own use. It is ours. But do we think that s>lant of ours worth cultivation after we lave got it, or do we think thai, willynilly, it must do its best on what halfminded attention we can give it ? Before wo are engaged, ho occupies every thinking minute and the wholo activities of our minds; afterwards, oh, there's the house-furnishing to think of, and the wedding with its guests; and, after that, household cares and the endless detail that makes life humdrum. And our newly-acquired husband is just a little bit neglected; just a little bit thrust on one side; a doll dearly wanted when it was in life's shop window, but pushed aside for other newer toys.

There are so few old-fashioned wives and mothers among us nowadays; women •who will put onr menfolk and children first bofore the exactions of social duties and society routine. Newer ambitions urge us to treat life as a game, .in which our husbands and offspring are merely pawns that we push over the squares in our efforts to win. Their needs, their highest good, are subordinate to our own desires. And, often, though we succeed in our aim, that of out-distancing our friends, the higher tone of the homo is lost; and the love on which it wasi started is like one of (hose everlasting flowers that we pick in the autumn, stul attractive to the eye but with no sap in its stalk; the dry, lifeless, ornamental corpse of a once lovely thing. / =