by Elsie Lincoln Benedict
Available in 98 free installments
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¶ The same thing happens every day between severe, bony wives and their florid, frolicking husbands. "She is a perfect housekeeper and a good wife" exclaim her friends?"why should her husband spend his evenings away from home?" These questions will continue to be asked until we realize that being "a good housekeeper and a good wife" does not fill the bill with a Thoracic man. A wife who will leave the dinner dishes in the kitchen sink occasionally and run away with him for a "lark" on a moment's notice is the kind that retains the love of her florid husband. A husband who is willing to leave his favorite magazine, pipe, and slippers to take her out in the evening is the kind a Thoracic woman likes. She even prefers a "gay devil" to a "stick"?as she calls the slow ones.
¶ The Thoracic man wants his wife to look well and be pleasing but no husband wants his wife to be irresistibly attractive to other men. So it often happens that the Thoracic woman causes her husband much jealousy.
Her youthful actions and distinctive dressing make her a magnet for all eyes. If he happens to be too different in type to understand her naturalness and pure-mindedness in this he often suffers keenly. Sometimes he causes her to suffer for it when they get home.
Human Analysis makes us all more tolerant of each other. It enables us to know why people act as they do, and, best of all, that they mean well and not ill most of the time.
¶ The Thoracic, you will remember, dislikes monotony. Everything savoring of routine, sameness?the dead level?wears on him.
Three meals a day three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, with the same person, in the same room, at the same table, is unspeakably irksome to him. He may love that other person with completeness and constancy, but he occasionally demands what Bernard Shaw calls "domestic change of air."
"My Wife's Gone to the Country," was the biggest song hit of its year because there were so many florid men who understood just how that man felt!
¶ The florid wife is as loving as any other but she heaves a sigh of relief and invites her women friends in for a party when John goes away on business.
¶ Thoracic husbands or wives are not as easy to live with as the Alimentive. They are too affectable, too susceptible to sudden changes of mood. They live alternately on the crest of the wave and in the depths, and rob the home of that serenity which is essential to harmony.
Impulsive tendencies which made the sweetheart adorable are less attractive in the wife. And hubby's hair-trigger temperament she now calls just plain temper.
¶ That they are the most charming in manner, the most tasteful in dress and the most entertaining of any type constitute the traits which make the Thoracic husband or wife desirable and attractive.
¶ Husbands and wives of this type present this marital problem however: they tend to live beyond their means. The husband in such a case seldom confides the true state of his financial affairs to his wife while the Thoracic wife, bent on making the best possible appearance, finds it almost impossible to trim down expenditures to fit the family purse.
The habit of entertaining extravagantly and almost constantly also costs the Thoracic household dear.
¶ The desire on the part of a Thoracic husband or wife to move frequently from that particular house, neighborhood, or city presents another difficulty.
¶ For the reasons stated above and throughout this work, the predominantly Thoracic person should marry his own type as first choice. No other can understand his impulsiveness.
His second choice should be a person predominantly of the Alimentive type. The Alimentive is more like the Thoracic than any other, and in the places where they differ the Alimentive gives in with better grace than other types.
The third choice may be a predominantly Muscular person. In the latter case, however, the Muscular should have either Thoracic or Alimentive tendencies combined with his muscularity.
Because they are so different as to be almost opposites, and therefore unable to understand each other, the last person the Thoracic should marry is the Osseous.
