DO WOMEN LOVE ROGUES?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 146, 17 July 1909, Page 3

DO WOMEN LOVE ROGUES?

OR IS IT MERELY FANCY! j If we were content to take our opin-1 ions of women from our morning newspaper (says a Home writer), we might conclude that woman has an inherent liking, if not an actual preference, for the conventional scoundrel. But let us consider if this is so in actual fact. There is in this country a most singular dearth of men, and the opportunities I hat the average respectable woman lias of meeting a prospective huyband are, in many cases, extraordinarily limited. SEXTI-MENT MUCH Ef EVIDENCE. Hence the otherwise absolutely incomprehensible success of the matrimonial advertisement. Our social life is so constructed that hundreds of young men and women never meet others of their

Then it has been said that no man is' so miserable but that lie can discover some woman who will be more miserable still for his sake. And on this principle this worst of criminals- must iind a wife. And when all is said and done, ths chartered scoundrel—*the bigamist, the forger—may be scarcely more objectionable, may, in many cases, be far less so, than the smugly-respectable, highlyrespected thing of petty vices that so often a woman must call "husband." We are, of course, nowadays, many of us, far too sentimentally inclined towards the scoundrel. While fully believing in a aane and I firm justice, the necessity of punishment and its usefulness, it may be conceded 'that not infrequently the scoundrel, whose sins bring him within reach of the law, has sometimes a "way with him" that appeals to our 6ex. The same imagination which has' started the bigamist on his career of adventure gives him, perhaps, a. sympathetic insight in 'dealing with women. RICH MEN® WIVES OFTEN STINTED. Everything is relative, even villainy, so to fleece a young man of means of a' considerable portion of his belongings, or even to entrap a young woman into ! a bogus marriage, is hardly worse than the going-iback on a friend in trouble, pr dealing meanly with dependents. How often in the countries' of doweryless women, arc not 'the very wives of quite rich men more stinted, and in that sense poorer, than the laborer's wife. The women of the upper classes of are likewise credited with a ten'/terncss for knaves and rogues. And 'chough it may be true, yet the mystery uf her apparent weakness' for the triumphant villain remains unsolved.