THE NEW IDEAL IN HUSBANDS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13907, 7 November 1919, Page 2

THE NEW IDEAL IN HUSBANDS.

(By Hilda 11. Love, in the Sunday Pictorial.) The sale, sure job used to be one of the best passports with which man would come to the girl of his choice. "He's steady!" said the maiden to her secret self, while that secret self obediently put away its: dreams of a bold adventurous lover. So she took the man with a yearly increase of salary, a yearly holiday, a yearly insurance, and everything cut, dried and secure for the years ahead. This man had the pull in courtship. His attractive but adventurous brother was turned down in favor of the less enterprising but steady suitor. The latter occupied the highest pedestal in the matrimonial market. Wise mothers encouraged his worship. That was before the demobbed maid of the new age returned from her war work, surveyed the old idol, and decided that his carefully-as-sured future brought no joy to her spirit. The man of enterprise, the man who is not afraid to leave the old rut. who is willing to take a chance in making good on his own ■ —that is the man who gets her attention. Her newly-awakened love of adventure responds to her enterprising spirit, lus ambitions meet with instant sympathy. Here is her ideal combination of romance and adventure. Heart and head answer to his wooing. .The thousands of; war brides who have crossed the waters are evidence of the attraction of the adventurous husband. Thousands of other young couples are but wailing their passages to (he new lands where they hope for the greater opportunity that tnav come to spirits unafraid.

Gone 'for ever arc the heart-break-ing farewells of other days when the man left the girl behind while he i went to make a home. "I'm eomiri:r with von," says our- modern, maid,. eager and enthusiastic: we'll have this adventure together!'' One mother tried to understand why her daughter had refused a comfortably situated bank clerk. "You evidently 3o not love him," she declared when her daughter attempted to explain. "No. but I could." retorted the jrirl. "if only he had more adventure in him. That monotonous career ahead of him (unite contents him. A motor-bike and a house of his own will lie the end of his adventure. I couldn't marry a man who lacks the confidence to do the things I would do. I should have to take the lead. I want a man who'll take the lead himself and let me be there and help bun too." 1 That girl is now on her war to tlie Fiji Islands, the wife of a demobbed man she knew in her schooldays, who is making a bid for the life he always wanted. When she made th--outburst to her startled parent she voiced the sentiments of many of her widowed and single sisters in her demand for an enterprising husband.

It is the result of the enlarged vision of war years; of their knowledge of the heights to which youth can climb when endowed with "push and go." Every woman in her heart loves a lighter. The war girl has the fighting spirit. She put up her own little show during the dark days. That- is why the man who steps out from the old secure commercial shelter where circumstances and not'inclination placed him. and fight for his own real niche, gains her admiration. Side bv side with him she win fight for a place in the sun. Everywhere there is evidence that women are hacking the demobbed man who wishes to make a new venture, are helping him to snap the old chains. Woman's timorous dread of the unknown formerly smothered adventure in many a man. glued him to the uncongenial job. The banishment of fear is one of the war's most marked effects on women. Hers is now not the restraining hand. The adventurous husband lias come into his own. Tlie girl of the war days sees in him the mate that meets her requirements as a man and a lover. And .thank goodness, she is usually discerning enough to differentiate between the purely restless adventurer and the- man' who is honestly out to make good. "fUamor!" savs the spectator, as he looks upon some of these "Victory unions, and he gloomily prophesies a- rude awakening. Of course, there's p-la.nior. Whoever heard of .-o.urtship without it? .Awakening! Equally of-course : it happens in the most conventional households. But this latest spirited edition of Britain's daughters is not likely to sit down and pity herself should the reality prove less rosv than she pictures. She takes her chance of love and life boldlv, and well she may, for Fate has dowered her with the Spirit of Adventure and Romance-, those twin gifts which give the world gay hearts and great lovers.