THE CHINA MAIL, JANUARY 5, 1939.
Here's A Plan
Plan For Every Married
"T started with Jack suddenly
IT
--DON'T."
saying, "Oh, for Heaven's sake
For Jack and I weren't having
I was thunderstruck.
Couple
done.
WHO
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pretty big guy, the way you listen- ed to my dissentations on politics and how we should run the country.. Now you say, "Smart bloke, ain't you?" even if you go as far as pre- dish to want to feel a big guy to your wife-but there it is!
a quarrel or anything like that. In those little peculiarities and de- up our feelings as we had both tending to listen. Perhaps it's chil- fact I had thought that we were fects in each other's face. enjoying 3 specially nice domestic evening.
Jack had been reading at one side of the fire. I had been sitting on the other knitting.
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Then we had each dropped what we were doing to have what I had always loved, one of our little cosy
twosome chats.
So you can imagine my amaze- ment when I saw by the sudden ir- ritation of Jack's face and that DON'T which seemed to burst from him that he at any rate wasn't en- joying the evening a bit.
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*:
What could be the matter? I had to find out.
And I did, in spite of Jack's em- barrassment, and 'his hasty apology, and the obvious way be hated having the matter probed.
Do you know what it was?
All the time I was talking I was tapping my teeth with a knitting needle.
That was all. But apparently I was continually doing it. It had become a quite unconscious-habit.
And Jack couldn't stand it.
It put his nerves so much on edge that the whole world, seemed to him while he watched-and he couldn't keep from watching-to consist of a knitting needle tap tap tapping against a woman's teeth.
• For I was
not the only one to blame.
Now I was able to confess that if I had ever thought of "going home to mother" it would not have been because Jack ill-treated me, but because he left his pyjamas on the bed-room floor every morning for me to pick up. ·
How many times had I muttered to myself. "Does he think I'm his slave?" when I tidied up the bed- room.
But by the evening, of course, I forgotten all about it-or
had
We have been married five years. Jack and I, and we are still in love. So once we got to talking about these things we were able to do in a thought I had-and was too pleased friendly way and without taking of- to see Jack home to spoil things by fence.
"grousing."
It is probably just because we do What we had NOT realised was love one another that we hadn't that we should not have been grous- done it sooner. If we were not in ing by airing these matters, that we love most likely we should have had been heading for a minor or
So now we have made a plan. We have gone back in our mem- ories to the time when we first fell in love and got married, and have
each on our own-drawn up one used to be as refreshing as a hot 5. Coming home from business list of the things which then at- bath, with your pleasure at seeing tracted us in each other, and an- me and the way other of the ways in which we feel that I really, do land back pretty you appreciated. we have been disappointed and "let tired. down."
Now I'm hardly through the door You can hardly credit-until you before you're airing your grievances write them down-how tiny are about the joint that arrived late or
ON EACH
GET OTHER'S NERVES
some of the attractions or annoy- ances which are yet so important that the entire happiness of your life depends on them.
For instance, here's JACK'S LIST!
1. I used to love the way you were always so trim and neat in any circumstances.
the way your back will be broken. if I don't buy you a vacuum cleaner.
Yes, truly, those were the chief points of Jack's "indictment.”
Now look at mine:
1. I used to admire a sort of clean outdoor glow you had about you.
I still do, but I know now, how much of the dirt you leave in a rim round the bath. I would like the: evidence destroyed!
2. You always used to be so nice: and natural with my friends.
Now you come in from business: or from
your carpentry with a Now
"Well, well, here are all the little lots of times you don't bother to see if your stocking seams just infuriating.
women together" attitude which is: are straight, and if it's a wet day.
you simply throw on a mackintosh being musical while you're dress-
3. I honestly enjoy hearing your
and old hat.
2. You used to let me flop about in an armchair and say you like to see me really comfortable.
ing.
But, oh dear, could you some- times sing a tune right through, not again through your teeth? whistle one phrase over and over
taken every opportunity to throw even major catastrophe by bottling ing cushions and picking up news- bunches of violets you used to buy
Now, if you don't say "Jack has to be absolutely dishevelled to be happy," you go
4. Believe it or not, I used to get ́round straighten-'a big kick out of the two-penny-
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papers in an uncomplaining way which really shouts your true feel- ings aloud.
3. I always knew, of course, that you used make-up and I don't mind in the least.
.But somehow I'm sure your ciga- rette ends never used to have that pink edging they have now when
you put them in the ash-tray.
4. You used to make me feel a
me from that old man on the corner. Pour old boy, he hasn't done much has he? trade with you the last year or two,-
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trouble thinking out nice meals for 5. I really do take quite a deal of
and appreciated it. you. And you used to show you knew
Now you shovel a chicken and mushroom casserole out of sight without so much as a "Thanks, old girl."
Do you think that Jack and I were being “catty" in compiling ·
these frank lists?
Or do you believe that we cannot call ourselves really in love while so many and such apparently trivial things get on our nerves?
Well, try it for yourselves. Have a grand "clearance day" as we have done. Be quite honest with yourself and your wife or husband,
See if your lists won't be just as "trivial"-and as important-18
ours.
書
THE DAIRY FARM, ICE & COLD
STORAGE CO., LTD.
PURE FOOD SPECIALISTS.
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And judge for your self whether-
a laugh together over your lists, .. coupled with a determination to be all over again the sort of person who first won the other one's love, won't add a hundred-fold to the contentment of your home and to- the love and friendship between the two of you,