Why They Married

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The first of our heroines married for money. Her suitor was elderly but affluent. She liked to ride in automobiles and dine at expensive restaurants. She despised her humble but happy home and she gladly permitted him to place upon her finger the ring that bound her life to his. A year later stock reverses wiped out his fortune in a day, and a heart made weak by dissipation and the excitement of the stock market could not stand the strain of the terrible day. His fortune gone, he sank back into his desk chair as the ticker made its last fateful announcement, and, widowed and impoverished in a day, the weeping wife realized that she bad not chosen wisely. The second girl was tired of the monotony of her work in a milliner's and she threw up her place to marry a fascinating young fellow with a fondness for good horseflesh and good living. But a year later she is taking in washing, and the money she earns goes to the keeper of the poolroom, where the husband, now a dissolute loafer, almost invariably loses his dollar bets. The third matrimonial venture was the result of the feminine belief that marriage will reform a drunkard. The tipsy youth at a fashionable function is shunned by all save the woman who loves him and who lends willing ear to his promises of reformation, but within one year he has become a hopeless sot and their home the abode of misery none the less acute because of the evidences of wealth. The old maid married because she wanted a man; but the puny specimen she acquired was scarcely to be classed as such. Yet, in a way, perhaps she was happy. The last girl couldn't tell just how it happened, but she had an idea that she was in love. When Jim found an extra five in his pay envelope, with the assurance that he would continue to find one every week, he sprinted to the factory where Polly worked and caught her just as she was leaving for the Saturday half holiday. The result was a ring and a kiss, and a year later there was a tiny Jim to make their happiness complete. Hers was the better choice, and the lesson is none the less a story with a moral because it is so well disguised with strong, tense tragedy, dainty comedy and just a touch of farce.