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Show 'Share Wisdom' Better Than 'Share Wealth' By BITH MILLETT Out ef every thousand struggling to reach the top in some choaen profeeeion. perhaps ona finds the way. One out of a thousand learns first hand what succeaa la all about. The experience Is seldom shared with another generation. Old age cornea along. Perhaps then the man of great achievement decldea that he will do aomething for you. So he endows a college or a university, sstabltshes echolar-ahlpa, echolar-ahlpa, or sets aside a large sum of money for research. Ha la helping young people, to be sure but In giving money he is giving nothing of himself. Hia experience, ex-perience, struggles, the things he learned while climbing to the top, all these remain shut away from youth. -The dominant personality that helped him rise above the thousandor thou-sandor hundred thousand seldom becomes an inspiration to younger men. For young men have no way of knowing a great man. He is made unapproachable by success itself. it-self. Maude Adama to Track It took a woman to decide that today's young people might welcome a more personal gift than successful success-ful men have seen fit to give. At 64, Maude Adams, who retired from the stage nearly 20 yeara ago, is preparing prepar-ing to share her art, her years of experience, her remembered triumphs tri-umphs with a group of girls who grew up too late to know her name aa their mothers and fathers knew It. Tha creator of "Peter Pan," and other Barrie roles is taking over the drama department of Stephens, a Junior college In Columbia, Mo. In giving these young women the benefit of her own rich experience, experi-ence, perhaps Maude Adama ia pointing tha way for women who have reached the top is other fields. Wouldn't such a close relationship relation-ship with youth be the happiest, most worthwhile ending for any successful career? Need a woman's useful life be finished when age forces her to turn aside out ef the main stream? An Example for Others Maude Adams has done a splendid thing even If she is the only person per-son willing to make youth such a personal gift as aharlng a past rich in achievement. But how much more she has done, if her new work inspires other women to seek this worthwhile way of living in a young, sr generation. The successful lawyer, doctor, business womsn, social worker, writer, or screen star who has found ago a stumbling block in her own profession might well turn to give youth a helping hand. It would do so much to help a newer generation genera-tion and it would save a wealth of experience from being thrown away. A woman who knew that she was encouraging others aa Mauds Adams must know she is encouraging encourag-ing thoss young girls at Stephens could not for long know tha bitterness bitter-ness that must come to one who haa stood at the top. Men. too. might well follow Maude Adams' lead. Or if they dislike following in a woman's footsteps, they can look back to a man who years ago decided to face his old age guiding young men. Hla name was Robert E. Lee and at the end of one career he began a new one. At the close of the war between the states, when his useful life might have been over, he turned to encourage en-courage youth, and became tha head of a university which later borrowed hia name. |