THE YOUNG IDEA

Southland Times, Issue 21073, 3 May 1930, Page 13

THE YOUNG IDEA

CROSS-WORDS, CROSS-ROADS

(By*

Susan Lee.)

It certainly* seems that one excuse is as good as another these days, if you want to get out of anything, especially marriage, and it isn’t exactly what you say, but the way you say it, which speaks most eloquently for you. Fifty years ago you couldn’t have found a better simile than “As lasting as the marriage bond,” because one of the fairy:stories our grandmothers used to hear at their mothers’ knees was that death was the only sunderer. But now I haven’t noticed that Mr Shaun O’Sullivan’s series of Modern Similes includes anything so crude or so variable. Indeed, it has ceased to be a bond, this marriage business, but rather a pleasant parking place between high roads of adventure. A year or two ago one venerable scribe in this journal talked about “loving like the butterflies, and passing on” and brought down a perfect hurricane of indignant protest about his satyrlike head. But it seems that he was only expressing in words what his contemporaries have been expressing equally as forcefully by their actions, and the lovely thing about it all is that everything is being done against the good orthodox background of the marriage service. That marriages are made in Heaven may still be true, and would suggest that many angels, those heavenly agents, abound on earth in the form of designing mothers; but what has to be taken into account nowadays is—where are divorces made ? I know that the obvious answer is in the United States. But America also said it won the war, and why should they be allowed all the credit for everything. The Americans are too prone to grab the plums and then waggle their fingers at the rest of the world for not knowing the cake was plum-cake. Let’s be content at present to remark that people do get divorces in the United States.

And why do people get divorced? (This is a rhetorical question, and I would be extremely annoyed if anyone were to butt in and try to answer it—at this stage, anyway.) Because I’ve come across a perfectly good reason myself, and being anxious to air it, I ask no interruptions). Why? One answer is—Crossword Puzzles. Believe me or not it’s the truth I’m telling you. For my authority I have a charming lady from the States ■who held up her hands in horror on seeing me working at a puzzle the other day.—No, she never touched them. They had caused too many divorces where she came from. The papers were full of instances of husbands and wives quarrelling over them, one party suing for divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, or because his tea was never ready when he came home from work because she was too engrossed over a puzzle—or because be Would never take her out in the evenings because these infernal puzzles occupied all his attention. Pleasant little domestic differences beginning over the applicability of a . word or the meaning of a phrase contrived in the first place to puzzle the solvers, would end in headlines in the newspapers, and busted happiness spread like a disease over whole areas, of apartment houses. The little lady from the States was emphatic. She would never touch one of the things. Looking at her, I believed her, ahd asked her for a word in nine letters expressing “what the rustic mistook for ‘penny-a-mile’ on first looking at the time-table.” The fact that the answer w*as “afternoon” did not seem to impress her, although 'when she learned that the answer to “concerned with a grave matter, hence the black suit,” in six letters, was “spades” he began to show traces of faint interest W'hich I hoped to fan with a nine-letter word for “lying seems to restore the work of man,” and even went to the trouble of explaining that “mendacity” can also be written as “mend a city.” When she made the initial discovery that “hoist” satisfied the requirements of “I’m in the midst of many, so a lift is clearly indicated,” I think she began to realize that a great crossword puzzle solver has to L* born, not made, and there was the faintest suspicion of pique in the manner in which she received the knowledge that “Suzanne has lost the double in her name and is now below the heights” represented a word as simple as “glen,” although much of her mental equilibrium was restored when she, and not I , came on the really excellent solution of the nine-letter word satisfying “to indicate faintly, but not at the pace of a talkie, obviously,” which was “a dumbrate.” I must confess I have felt one or two sharp twinges of conscience since, because, after all, she was a happily married woman, and as such should have been cherished and preserved as carefully as the fast-disappear-ing squirrel. Perhaps I should never have led her into such pastures, especially knowing her views, and the sum of her observations. Such doubts as this were increased when I met her on the street yesterday, and her first words were a request for a seven-letter word, with “e,” “u” and “1” its second, fourth and sixth letters respectively, meaning “the weight, of conscience.” Not till then, had I realized just what unborn crimes might be lying, in eloquent accusation, at my feet. I denied any knowledge of the weight of conscience, and hurried on. It. was not till this morning that the •solace came to me that one excuse is as good as another, any way.