UNLESS SHE IS COMPELLED BY NECESSITY TO HELP EARN THE LIVING FOR HER FAMILY, NO MARRIED WOMAN SHOULD LEAVE HER HOME FOR OUTSIDE EMPLOYMENT A very distinguished woman thinks that she has discovered the secret of how to be happy though married. It is for every wife to be economically independent. She says that one of the most important things that a wife can do for her husbands peace of mind is to relieve him of her support, and if every married woman had some trade, whereby she brought home the bacon as well as fried it, it would do more than any one thing to solve the problems of life and domesticity. Among the other blessings that she foresees in this arrangement is that, while it would give children less mother, they would have more father, because, if men could divide the upkeep of their families with their wives, they would have more time to stay at home and play with the baby and help little Johnny with his arithmetic. This is a lovely theory, with many points about it that will commend it to both men and women. No one will deny that balancing the budget is just as good for a row in the home as it is in politics, or that the thing that mostly disillusions men with marriage and makes them wish they hadnt done it is the bills, and seeing the money that they would like to spend on their own pleasures and amusements, going to dress shops and beauty parlors and perambulators and sterilized milk. Marriage would come up to every mans romantic dreams and wives retain their glamour if they didnt cost anything, so it is easy to see how much it would add to the peace and harmony of a home if wife had a well filled pocketbook and did not have to go to husband every time she needed a pair of new shoes, or explain what she did with the quarter he gave her week before last. If it would promote domestic felicity among men for their wives to be self-supporting, it would go a long way toward making marriage a heaven on earth to women not to be financially dependent on their husbands. For there is no bitterer pill that a wife has to swallow than having to panhandle her husband for the money she earns a hundred times over in making him a comfortable home and rearing his children. But, alas and alack, there is always a BUT to all beautiful theories. How is this plan to be put in operation without upsetting the apple cart in the cases in which no wealthy father bestowed an adequate dowry upon his daughter? How is the poor girl who marries a poor man going to be able to do all of her housework and take care of her children, who need a twenty four hour a day service, and still be able to go out into the world and pursue some money earning career? TUESDAY FEBRUARY 26 Of course, the rich woman can hire a chef for her kitchen and trained baby experts and high salaried nursery governesses to look after her children while she starts a dress shop or a tearoom, but no hired hands can make a real home, and no scientific care can take the place of a mothers love and tenderness and infinite understanding. And, anyway, the rich woman who goes into business seldom eases her husbands economic burden. Generally she adds to it because he has to pay her losses. And, in addition, he has to live in a home that is as impersonal as a hotel and see his children neglected. Unfortunately, there are cases where a woman is forced by financial necessity to be a bread winner as well as wife and mother and home maker, but this is no ones ideal of home life, for the very good reason that no woman is magician enough to be in two places at once. No pair of hands are strong enough to do the work of four, The part time domestic woman simply cannot give to her husband, her children and her home the attention they need. No mans idea of the kind of a home he wants is a place, to which his wife has given a lick and a promise in the morning before she hurried off to the store or office, and to which she returns in the evening too tired to do more than get up a makeshift dinner with a can opener. Nor is his idea of the kind of a mother he wants to bring up his children on the street, while she is downtown earning a few dollars. A man wants to come home at night to a lighted house, to a good dinner, to a woman who is rested and ready to be companionable with him. Children want a mother who is always in reach and to whom they can fly in times of trouble, and who is always there to kiss their hurts and make them well. These things being among the primitive facts of life, it is hard to understand how women are going to add to the happiness of marriage by leaving their homes and their children and becoming wage earners. Evil habit first draws, and then drags, and then drives COLERIDGE WARNERS CALENDAR OF MEDICAL HISTORY