to the Cave Man's Refuge?

We cannot tell; we only know that all humor aside, and without reference
to the past, the Nervous Housewife is surely a phenomenon of the
present-day American home. In greater or less degree she is in every
man's home; nor is she alone the rich Housewife with too little to do,
for though riches do not protect, poverty predisposes, and the poor
Housewife is far more frequently the victim of this disease of
occupation. Every practicing physician, every hospital clinic, finds her
a problem, evoking pity, concern, exasperation, and despair. She goes
from specialist to specialist,--orthopedic surgeon, gynecologist, X-ray
man, neurologist. By the time she has completed a course of treatment
she has tasted all the drugs in the pharmacopeia, wears plates on her
feet, spectacles on her nose, has had her teeth tinkered with, and her
insides straightened; has had a course in hydrotherapeutics,
electrotherapeutics, osteopathy, and Christian Science!

Such is an extreme case; the minor cases pass through life burdened with
pains and aches of the body and soul. And one of the commonest and
saddest of transformations is the change of the gay, laughing young
girl, radiant with love and all aglow at the thought of union with her
man, into the housewife of a decade,--complaining, fatigued, and
disillusioned. Bound to her husband by the ties the years and the
children have brought, there is a wall of misunderstanding between them.

"Men don't understand," cries she. "Women are unreasonable," says he.

What are the causes of the change? Did the housewife of a past
generation go through the same stage? Ask any man you meet and he will
tell you his mother is or was more enduring than his wife. "She bore
three times as many children; she did all her own housework; she baked
more, cooked more, sewed more; she got up at five o'clock in the morning
and went to bed at ten at night; she never went out, never had a
vacation, did not know the meaning of manicure, pedicure, coiffure. She
was contented, never extravagant, and rarely sick."

So the average man will say, and then: "Those were the good old days of
simple living, gone like the dodo!" To-day,--well, it reminds me of a
joke I heard. One man meets another and says: 'By the way, I heard that
your wife was the champion athlete at college.' 'Ah, yes,' said the
husband; 'now she is too weak to wash the dishes.'

Is the average man's impression the correct one? Or