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horses - what
time they were not doing the monkey and parrot act. The husband stayed
out nights and tippled. The wife sat at home and felt virtuous. Finally
the woman worked up spunk enough to do what she had been dying to
do for years. She packed up and left. Now she is happily married to a
man she can pull with, And he is married to another woman who pulls with
him. She has quit feeling virtuous and he has quit tippling. They
are both prospering financially. The children have two pleasant
homes, and more educational and other advantages than they ever dared hope
for. Everyone of the family is glad of that separation. The family is
an institution of man's own making. It is a good and glorious thing
so long as it serves to increase the happiness and health of its
members. But whenever the family institution has to be maintained at the expense
of the life, liberty or happiness of its members it is time to lay
that particular institution on the shelf. What God does
not hold together by LOVE let not man try to paste together by
law. One great
cause of the increase of divorces is the financial emancipation
of woman. Women can now get out and take care of themselves,
where a few years ago they had to grin and bear it; or bear it without
grinning. If the new
thought means anything, Brother Wing, it means that every individual man
or woman, has the RIGHT to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
wherever and with whom he chooses to seek it, so long as he or she does
not attempt to abridge the same rights for others. It means that a woman
is as much an Individual as a man, and must stand or fall, hold her
husband or lose him, on her own merits. The new thought deals with
Individuals regardless of sex. Marriage is a
partnership, subject in the eyes of Justice to the same rules which
govern other partnerships. Let us be just to the deserter, be he man or
woman, before we are sentimentally generous to the deserted. And don't let
us be too sure that we know all the facts in these separation
cases. It is human nature to fix up outward appearances for the benefit of
the passer-by. Seek rather to
understand. Condemn not. Has any one
told you it is lucky to be married? I hasten to
inform you it is just as lucky to be divorced, and I know it.
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