How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

that serenity which is essential to harmony.

Impulsive tendencies which made the sweetheart adorable are less attractive in the wife. And hubby's hair-trigger temperament she now calls just plain temper.

Desirable Traits of Thoracics

¶ That they are the most charming in manner, the most tasteful in dress and the most entertaining of any type constitute the traits which make the Thoracic husband or wife desirable and attractive.

Live Beyond Means

¶ Husbands and wives of this type present this marital problem however: they tend to live beyond their means. The husband in such a case seldom confides the true state of his financial affairs to his wife while the Thoracic wife, bent on making the best possible appearance, finds it almost impossible to trim down expenditures to fit the family purse.

The habit of entertaining extravagantly and almost constantly also costs the Thoracic household dear.

¶ The desire on the part of a Thoracic husband or wife to move frequently from that particular house, neighborhood, or city presents another difficulty.

Should Marry Own Type

¶ For the reasons stated above and throughout this work, the predominantly Thoracic person should marry his own type as first choice. No other can understand his impulsiveness.

His second choice should be a person predominantly of the Alimentive type. The Alimentive is more like the Thoracic than any other, and in the places where they differ the Alimentive gives in with better grace than other types.

The third choice may be a predominantly Muscular person. In the latter case, however, the Muscular should have either Thoracic or Alimentive tendencies combined with his muscularity.

Because they are so different as to be almost opposites, and therefore unable to understand each other, the last person the Thoracic should marry is the Osseous.

Part Three MARRIAGE AND MUSCULARS

¶ The Muscular does not marry early like the Alimentive nor hastily like the Thoracic. His is a practical nature and his practicality is expressed here as in everything else. Back of his Marriage you will often find some of the same practical reasons that prompt his other activities.

Marries Between Twenty-five and Thirty-five

¶ Most Musculars are still unmarried at twenty-five when their Alimentive friends have families and when their Thoracic ones have had a divorce or two. But few Musculars are unmarried at thirty-five, though at that age their Osseous and Cerebral friends are often still single.

The Muscular does not marry on nothing, and as he does not star in any line of work as early in life as the Alimentive or Thoracic he does not have the means to marry as early in life as they. But he is a splendid worker, gets something to do and does it fairly well.

The Alimentive spends too much on food and other comforts and the Thoracic too much on luxuries, but the Muscular, while not mercenary, saves a larger portion of his income.

Make "Sensible" Marriages

¶ So at somewhere around thirty the Muscular is prepared to establish a home. By that time he has lived past the rash stage and selects a mate as much like himself as possible, in order not to be thwarted in his aims for "getting somewhere in the world"—aims which dominate this type all his life.

A Mate for Wearing Qualities

¶ This type selects his mate as he selects his clothes—for wearing quality. He prefers plain, simple people, for he is plain and simple himself. They are not carried off their feet by impulse as are some of the other types. They therefore choose wives and husbands whose lovable qualities show signs of durability.

The Most Positive Lover

¶ The Muscular makes love almost as strenuously as he does everything else. He does not do it especially gracefully like the Thoracic, nor caressingly like the Alimentive, but intensely and in dead earnest. He does not cut short the courtship like the Thoracic, nor extend it for years like the Osseous, but marries as soon as the practical requirements can be met.

The Alimentive is the most affectionate in love and the Thoracic the most flirtatious, but the Muscular is the most positive.

The Fatal Handicap

¶ The Muscular has more strong traits than any other type from the marital point of view, but he has one weakness of such magnitude that it often counterbalances them. His pugnacity causes him to give way frequently to violent outbursts of anger. In them he says bitter things that are almost impossible to forgive.

This type's chief handicap in all his relations is his tendency to fight too quickly, to say too much when angry, and thus to make enemies.

In marriage this is a serious handicap which loses many an otherwise ideal husband or wife the chance for happiness.

Another Muscular trait which makes life difficult for his mate is his tendency to be so generous with outsiders that his family suffers.

Also this type of husband or wife is inclined to sacrifice the social side of family life to work and thus widen the distance between husband and wife as the years go on.

Desirable Traits

¶ Working capacity, generosity and squareness are qualities making for the success of the Muscular marriage.

The Muscular wife, more often than any other, helps earn the living when things go wrong financially.

The Muscular usually dislikes flirtations and gives his mate little anxiety on this score.

Mates for Musculars

¶ The Muscular has four choices in the selection of a mate. There is but one type he should never marry and that is the Osseous. The stubborness of the Osseous, when pitted against the Muscular's pugnacity, causes constant warfare. The predominantly Muscular person should choose a mate who is also predominantly Muscular. No other type aids him in the practical affairs of the family's future. But it is well for him when this Muscular has decided Cerebral tendencies. Second choice for the Muscular is a mate predominantly Cerebral. The Muscular in this case furnishes the brawn to work out the plans made by the brain of the Cerebral, and the combination is one that stands a good chance of happiness. Third choice is the Thoracic, and fourth choice the Alimentive.

Part Four THE OSSEOUS IN LOVE

¶ Bring to mind all the men and women you have known who waited ten, twenty or thirty years for the one they had given their hearts to. You will recall that they all had large bones or large joints for their bodies. Such people are always predominantly Osseous.

The loved one may marry but the bony man or woman remains faithful; it must be the one they want or none.

The Riddle Solved

¶ This fact accounts for some of the incongruous matches in middle or later life of old friends who seem to be unfitted to each other. Often one of them has waited many years for the other to consent, for children to grow up, or for Death to clear the way.

One Lover Through Life

¶ Osseous men and women are so constituted that it is practically impossible for them to love many times during a lifetime.

Bony people, even when young, have fewer sweethearts than other types. The large-boned boy or girl is usually ill at ease in the presence of the other sex, avoids social affairs, and does not attract love as early in life as other types do.

They suffer keenly from the near-ostracism resulting from this, but are powerless to change it.

Live Apart from Others

¶ Because they live more or less apart from their fellows, even as children, and tend to withdraw into themselves, the Osseous see little of the other sex, learn little about it and come to think of it as unapproachable.

As we have seen, the Alimentive feels at ease with the other sex, the Thoracic charms them, the Muscular cultivates them when he is in earnest, but the Osseous avoids them. If he does not marry he becomes more and more awkward in their presence as he grows older. Such a person will often go a block out of his way to avoid meeting a person of the opposite sex.

Marries Less Often

¶ This naturally leads to the unmated life which characterizes so many men and women of the Osseous type.

We asked you to recall the one or two Alimentive bachelors and spinsters you ever knew, the three or four Thoracics and the not more than half a dozen Musculars who didn't marry. But it will take some time to enumerate the Osseous people you know who have never married. This type constitutes a very large proportion of the unmarried.

Most Difficult to Live With

¶ When the Osseous does marry he is the most difficult of all types to live with, because he is inclined to be immovable and unbending.

To give and take has long been considered the secret of happy marriage and certainly is one of them. But this type finds it almost impossible to adapt himself to his mate. He wants everything in a certain way at a certain time and for a certain purpose. Whoever opposes him is pretty ruthlessly handled.

Another marital liability of this type is his disinclination and inability to make new friends. He contributes to the family circle only those few intimates he has had for years.

Likes to Dominate

¶ The Osseous is inclined to dominate and often to domineer over his mate and over his family in general. This is as true of the women as of the men. As we have seen, type and not sex is what causes the big distinctions between people.

The Hen-Pecked Husband

¶ Whenever you see a hen-pecked husband look at his wife. You will always find that she has either large joints, large bones or a square jaw.

Many times we have heard men declare "they would show such a wife how to act," but unless they could change her boniness they would find it difficult to "show her" much of anything.

The reason the husband of such a woman seldom resists is because he is nine times out of ten an Alimentive or a Cerebral—types that prefer to be bossed rather than to boss.

The same combination is usually present when the husband dominates the wife. He is almost invariably bony and she is either Alimentive or Cerebral. And other women say, "I'd like to show such a husband what I would do if he tried to tyrannize over ME as he does over her!" But such a woman often prefers a husband who relieves her of the responsibility of decisions, and two such people sometimes lead surprisingly happy lives together.

Mates for the Osseous

¶ Therefore the type best fitted to live in harmony with the predominantly Osseous is the predominantly Alimentive. Second choice is the predominantly Cerebral, for the reasons stated above. There is no third choice.

The pure Osseous and pure Thoracic should not marry because they are too far removed from each other in all their tendencies ever to understand each other.

The one type the pure Osseous should never mate with is his own. Nothing but trouble results when two of the extreme bony type marry, for each has definite views, desires and preferences—and neither can give in.

Part Five LOVE AND THE CEREBRAL

¶ The Cerebral type takes most of his love out in dreaming. He is as impractical about his affections as about all else and often nothing but hopes come of it. Next to the Osseous he marries less frequently than any other type.

Head and Heart in the Clouds

¶ The Cerebral often remains single because he can not come down to earth long enough to propose, or if he does he is so gentle and timid about it the girl is afraid to trust her life to him.

Timidity His Curse

¶ Timidity costs the Cerebral man most of the good things he