TOO GOOD FOR THEIR WIVES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3577, 17 July 1912, Page 8

TOO GOOD FOR THEIR WIVES.

WOMEN LONG FOR MEN WHO WILL “BOSS THEM.”

A well known Californian mercham named Hirsch has recently obtained a- divorce from his wife in most remarkable circumstances. Two years ago the lady deserted him because “she could no longer endure Iris perfections.” , As she would not come back to him, Mr Hirsch sought his freedom, which was granted by the court. In his evidence the unhappy husband stated that- he had given Ids wife every luxury, had never been jealous, bad never spoken an unkind word to her. and neither smoked, used had language, nor drank, and never stayed out late at. night- “She frequently said she could have loved me if only I would beat her, or at least scold her once in a while,” he add; “but I coudn’t do it.” *rhe late Mrs Hirs:h is not by . any means the only woman who doer, not approve cf kind jxnd attentive husbands. A few years ago a Mrs E\ under Craig sued her husband for divorce because he was too good. “He loved me too well to. make life with him endurable,” was her astounding statement in court. “I expected my husband to be a strong oak on which I might lean. I did not want a man who gave me my way in everything.”

Her husband made a vigorous reply to tliis strange complaint. He said: “My treatment'of my wile' is not the hind she was accustomed to at her own home. When we were married she used to tell me of the heavenly happiness she was having compared with the time she had with her stepfather. Now she says she yearns for a man who will ‘boss' her. About this oak-tree bun ness, I am inclined to the belief that if a branch or two from some sturdy tree had been properly administered where it would do the most good from time to time, I-could have proved more worthy of the title ‘model husband.’ ” An extraordinary matrimonial story was revealed in the Berlin courts a few years since. A man and a woman (both school teachers) became great friends and arranged to marry, in order that they should be able to help one another better in their studies. But it was agreed between them that, although legally wed, they should he nothing more than comrades. One day the husband forgot the terms of tho compact and spoke very iovingly to his wife, at the same time kissing he hand. Snatching her hand away, she left him immediately and applied for a separation, which, curiously enough, was granted to her. A Paris fashion paper, which started a correspondence in its columns on love, revealed the fact that many French women do not care for kind husbands. A very large number of the correspondents advised people never to marry for love, and one even went so far as to write: “You have no idea what a bore an affectionate husband becomes”; while another’s opinion was: “Marry the man you hate; love is not of the slightest importance for getting married.” Doctors and lawyers have frequently commented upon the extraordinary fascination that criminals and notoriously cruel men are able to exercise over women, and the following statement made by a wholesale bigamist named Johnson amply bears out their assertions. Johnson was sentenced to seven years’ hard labor in 1909 for bigamy, and he himself gave the names of no fewer than seventeen women whom he had married and deserted in the short space of four years. In a written confession tin's man said: “The women I met fell in love with me after I had talked with them two or three times. I found it did not pay to be soft and sweet with a woman. Treat her somewhat harshly, be a little distant, and she will come to you.”