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Billie Burke's Advice

Selected entries from actress Billie Burke's regular column in the Fort Wayne Sentinel

Billie Burke on Marriage

20th August, 1912
Billie Burke Says: Do You Expect to Marry?

The first word: EVERY GIRL HOPES TO MARRY.

No matter how seriously a girl may regard her life work out in the world, back in her brain there is always the idea that she will some day marry and settle down at home. With this ambition, one would think that every girl would in some way prepare herself for the duties of a wife. She should know how to take care of a home and children.

Few girls can expect upon marrying to go to a home as good as that they are leaving. They must begin with little and help the man they marry, as did their mothers before them.

No well woman, young or old, has a right to marry in ignorance of her duty as a wife, and becoming a wife, she should be ashamed to live in idleness. A millionaire who had recently broken off an engagement of his daughter with a poor man, said the other day: "No young man should ask a girl to marry him if he is not able to give her as good a home and as many luxuries as she is leaving behind."

A father who thinks this and teaches it to his daughter is preparing for her a life of tragedy, for whether she marries or remains single, a girl who has been living on her father's generosity and expects to live upon her husband's is sure to be as unhappy as her atrophied brain will allow her to be.

I confess I have little sympathy for the idle girl and a great respect and regard for the girl who knows how to do something well. This, I suppose, comes because it has taken such hard work for me to "arrive," and because I know that every setback (and I have had many) has broadened my character, reinforced my will power and made me altogether more capable.

There is no more sense in teaching your daughters that idleness is honorable than there is in teaching it to your sons, and I am sure that the right kind of girl, if she loved a man well enough to marry him, would be very glad to help him build up his fortunes and make a home. No partnership can be successful where one does all the work.

The man must not always be the worker and the woman the drone.

Just one last word: THE GIRL WHO WOULD NOT MAKE SACRIFICES FOR THE MAN SHE LOVES IS NOT WORTHY OF THE HOLY NAME OF WIFE.


17th September, 1912
Billy Burke Warns Girls Against Marrying Sick or Weak Men out of "Sympathy"

The First Word: IT IS JUST AS EASY TO FALL IN LOVE WITH A HEALTHY MAN AS A SICKLY ONE.

The Rev. Samuel George Smith, of Minnesota, startled all London recently by saying: "If I were to choose my own father, I'd rather have a robust burglar than a consumptive bishop."

The ideal man, in the mind of most girls, is one of health and strength, but many of them also have a silly notion that a dissipated man can be healthy. One hears so many limen times that it is the man with a large and redolent past who captures the finest girls.

Every normal girl not only should fear, but should be ashamed to give her children a tubercular father, for while the best authorities claim that tuberculosis is not hereditary, yet the weakness or tendency to it passes from one generation to the next and the disease itself is apt to go from parent to child because of the constant association of family life.

Pity is a sweet, womanly trait, and the poet says "pity is akin to love," but no girl with any sense should allow herself to become sentimentally interested in a man she knows is tainted with tuberculosis or any other disease which might in any way be transmitted to her children.

We are just beginning to realize the great part that bodily health plays in our lives — just learning that our bodies are only unclean as we make them unclean, and that the very first thing to be sought for in this world, if we would enjoy long life, is health of body and a knowledge of and right use of all its functions.

They say we cannot choose our fathers, but we certainly can choose who shall be the fathers of our children, and no silly consideration of self should interfere in the selection of a healthy man in preference to a weak one.

The minister quoted also said: "So long as women have strength and men have beauty, mating will not go far wrong," in other words, the union of strength and beauty means perfection.

Just one Last Word: MAKE YOURSELF BEAUTIFUL AND MARRY A MAN OF STRONG BODY AS WELL AS MIND.


14th January, 1914
Today's Special Article for Mere Men - Billie Burke Says Lots of Men Think They Want a Wife When They Are Simply Tired of Boarding House Cooking.

Here is a queer appeal from a man. It makes me think that the old idea of women having no sense of humor has gained evidence because men really do not want women to have a sense of humor. This poor man says: "I wish Miss Burke, that you would tell the young women to whom you write not to try to be humorous. I get so tired of having to keep my wits up to the mark when talking with some girls that, although they are pretty and charming, otherwise I do not see any more of them than I have to.

"It seems to me that the last person a man would want for a wife would be one of those women who is always trying to entertain him. I want my wife to be restful. I would rather she would be a little stupid than one of the kind described as "so bright and clever, you know." A little of that kind of a girl goes a long ways and to marry one, it seems to me, would be to resign one's self to a life-long residence in the place that has been described as using good intentions tor paving bricks.

"I like a quiet sort of a girl, one who does not act uncomfortable if you happen to sit quite still without talking for a minute or two when you go to call upon her. Neither do I like, a fussy girl, always fingering her hair, or twisting her rings, or biting her lips, or wrinkling up her forehead, or wiggling her feet. I simply cannot stand the kind of a girl that taps her feet as though she was nervous when you begin to tell a story. And from the flossy fluffy ruffled girl I hope I may be delivered. "

"I swear I have seen girls who could not wear a porous plaster without running baby ribbon through the holes!"

"Seems as though I do not see a sensible girl and more, one that you feel would be able to take care of a home, cook you a good dinner and help you eat it without worrying you to death by telling you the funny things that have happened in the neighborhood during the day, or asking you for money to buy her a new hat like that of the woman in the flat above."

"Marriage is serious business. It means more than just having a good time, and a wife means more than a woman who can tell a good story or even laugh at yours. I want a real business partner when I marry; one that will do her part in the strenuous battle of life and not expect to go along alway basking in sunshine and smiles to the time when I have worked myself out providing that Palm Beach kind of atmosphere. Don't, for pity's sake, tell your readers that bending over the cook stove will spoil their complexions, or I'll never find the kind of a girl I want to marry."

Yes, you will, my dear sir, but you will have to go to Ellis Island for her. Plenty of them come in on the ships from the old world every day. All sense of humor has been worked out of them long ago and as for "fluffy ruffles," they don't know what they look like. You will have to "pick 'em early," though, for after a girl has lived in this country a little while she begins to "sit up and take notice." She finds out that there is lots of fun and lots of beauty in this old world that can be hers for the taking.

Dear young man, the day of the stupid girl is past and you and all other men must "keep your wits up to the mark" if you want to marry girls worth having.


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