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Show Passing of Kate Douglas Wiggin Recalls Message to Modern Girl 0y MARGUERITE MOOCRft MARSHALL. I am not so ortin of th whol worW I inf for .my ewi valley!- , : f . - a . , . . Kat ttouffla wlcfln (Mrs. Oeorir C. Marira), th American a1r1s ntwellst, who ha just dl4 In Enfflann !ovd that line from Rostand i 'T'han tec I ,' and it may very wall be taken as th txt of her aw a llf. 8h sana; for her own valley a Uttl town omher In Maine, a feneration ao. Tet th New Tork flrl nf today, far rfmovH 1a point of tlan and placo from Kat Doujct Wipfin" valley, atlil laughs and erlea over "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Ymgn " That is th book by which "tb Ldy of th Twlnkl and tb Tear" will b remembered, for It is woven our of th texture of Mr. Tha Birds' Chris i mas Carol. M one of hr most widely read fictions, lias an 1 amuBioaT family of poor but honest , children In It, as well as a certain ! simple pathos, but th heroin Is to much th "Uttl Eva" typo of anvel child Not so 'Rebecca.' Bo Is as real and as sturdy a her 1 own burr raiica rrocaa; i'i wove known flapper who read about ber with an Uil'C'at even the jaaxleet moving picture cannot Inspire In j them. Her creator looked- Into the heart of girlhood and wrote. - 1 1 tried." Kate Douglas Wtggtn j one told th lata Nlxola Greeley- j Smith of The Evening World, "to paint In Rebecca a tittle gay tremulous, trem-ulous, sensitive. - eager, rhyming. I -dreamlpg child, setting her against a background of New Rnglsnd vll-lags vll-lags life. In the neighbors, her playmates, the spinster sunt, the siege driver, the voluble goaalp. tha village ne'er-do-well, with a fanw lly history aot open to Inspection I find my simpls human types." It Is because Miss Wiggln was simple, without overplaying simplicity, sim-plicity, that her book does not fafl into the New tins land hokum claea. Persona who have lived in tha eountry of "Rebecca of Runny-brook Runny-brook farm" hava known the persona per-sona In the book. But . they ring equally true to strangers to New England, because they ar not overdrawn. A for "Rebecca" herself, ehe belongs be-longs with Meg, Jo. Beth and Amy, Mlea Aleott'a "Utile Women." All I of 'them are girls as is.' am oi them put to shame the journey-made journey-made "Juvenile fiction" which la served today la our children. Even within the llmlte of her brief chronicle, one can -see "Rebecca" grow from girl to womsn. And thoagh she was a (unny nafured yeung person, both her strength and her humor keft her from, degenerating de-generating into a Pollyanna. Perhaps those thousands nf girl who heve loved little -Rebecca" would like to re-read the message of Kate Douglas Wiggln to modern girlhood, ones given to The Eva-sing Eva-sing Weald: . "Self-control, self-sacrifice, responsibility re-sponsibility those are the things the modem girl needs to learn. - "She may call them old-fashioned virtues, but what haa aba given ua Instead? One generation modifies and adapts th ideala of another.-ln America, perhapa, every decode show some change, som modification. modifi-cation. But surely, girls do Bt want la get away from tha Ideal r the mother and helpmate, the' meker and beeuOfler of counties little, but great things? . , "Eliminate the mother Instinct from the univeree, that beeutiful tender feeling which earea for ail the Httle. thing of life and makee them fertile, makee them grow and what have we left? Tb drone la th hive. , .... . "If ther be anything In the world mor futile than a useless man. it is a useless woman. " " -' ' |