This woman devotes as much attention to her grooming at sixty as the Alimentive does at twenty. For this reason you may any day see two women of forty together, one an Alimentive and the other a Thoracic—and take the plump one to be several or many years older than the florid one.
Love the "Bright Lights"
¶ Thoracic men and women care more about "the bright lights" than other types. The Alimentive likes what he calls "a good time"—with fun and plenty of "refreshments"—but the Thoracic's idea of a good time usually includes a touch of "high life."
This all comes from his love of thrill and novelty and is innocent enough. But it leads to misunderstandings and broken homes unless the Thoracic marries the right type of person.
¶ The Osseous, for instance, has nothing in his consciousness by which to understand the desire for excitement which is so strong in the Thoracic. We have all known good wives and loving mothers whose marital happiness was destroyed because they could not compel themselves to lead the drab existence laid out for them by their bony, stony husbands. In many cases the wife, who only wanted a little innocent fun, was less to blame than her unbending spouse.
Why She Went Insane
¶ One day several years ago we drove up to a lonely farmhouse in Montana just as a tragedy was enacted. The mother was being taken to the state asylum for the insane. The seven little children watched the strange performance, unable to understand what had happened. The father, a tall, raw-boned, angular man was almost as mystified as the children.
"Crazy?" he said, "I don't believe it. Say, what did she have to go crazy about? She hasn't seen anything to excite her. Why, she's not been off this farm for twenty years!"
The "Gay Devil" Husband
¶ 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.