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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Widow's Marriage, Fool's Project iir AM 38, widowed and with three children, girls 12 and 7 and a boy of 10. My 12 years of married mar-ried life were ideal. Gene left me comfortable and the children are fine specimens. My mother died five months ago, and since then I have been bitterly lonely. I am writing to ask your advice about marrying again. "I wouldn't be asking your advice," ad-vice," continues this very odd letter let-ter from a Texas woman, "if I knew whom to marry. But I don't. This town has no interesting free men in it. I have played about occasionally oc-casionally with men I wouldn't or couldn't marry, and have found no satisfaction in nightclubs, dancing, danc-ing, and shallow relationships of that sort. "Do you know, and can you put me in touch with, two or three men anxious to marry a handsome, well-fixed well-fixed woman who loves a good time, keeps a comfortable house, and needs a sympathetic companion?" And "Dot," to call her that, goes on with a list of the qualifications she would expect in her new mate. He must be 40, he must have exceptional ex-ceptional references and he must like a good time. Selfish, Inexperienced It is incredible to me that a woman so placed could be as completely com-pletely inexperienced and childishly childish-ly selfish as "Dot" reveals herself to be in this letter. I answered her personally, and at once, but I haven't much hope that my very forceful warning will have any effect. My reason for quoting her letter and her problem lies in the rather pitiful fact that, every year, thousands thou-sands of women deceive themselves with the fond thought that a second marriage will give them the happiness, hap-piness, the dear companionship This is the most promising view. But very often the picture is far darker than this. Dick wants to help handle the business of his bride. He knows of investments that will double that comfortable income of hers. She mustn't be afraid, women are all too timid, she can make herself a very rich woman. What can Mother say? "I married you, Dick, but I have no faith in your judgment." So she goes to the bank with Dick, and Dick takes her to a champagne lunch and assures her she has shown good judgment. And that, many times, is the end of her money, and often the children's money, too. Letters aren't often as childish as the one I quoted in the beginning begin-ning of this article, but all women have a way of bringing arguments into line when they plan the deep injustice to their children that a second marriage almost always involves. in-volves. And If this Is the case in what Mrs. Wiggs called a "sod" widow, it is doubly the case when it Is a "grass" widow who is concerned. Then children's delicate nervous system may be actually destroyed by the palpable efforts of Mother to show that he does love them. Only she' has to love Uncle Dick, too, and Uncle Dick isn't always quite well, you see, darlings . The darlings don't see anything but one complicated, nerve-racking mistake piled on another, for the excellent reason that that is what the situation becomes. With no children, chil-dren, or with motherless children needing her, or perhaps with one grown child, the experiment often is a success. But with girls of 12 and 7 and a boy of 10 well, no sensible woman need go out of her way to invite that sort of trouble into her home. ". . . I have played about . . ." that death has taken away. They will not recognize the simple truth that one happy marriage is more than the normal allowance, that their memory of Tom and his tenderness ten-derness has been softened and exaggerated by time, and that their chances of finding a real mate in this sort of a risk are not one in a thousand. Loneliness and vanity and hope rise triumphant over all arguments, and every year we can all count among our friends the widows who want to try again. In all this, their children are the first victims. Mother has told them sweetly, pleadingly, that they must be nice to Uncle Dick who is going to come live with them, and take Daddy's place. And for awhile how jolly Uncle Dick is with young Stan, how pleasantly he teases Carol and spoils Baby Sally. Jealousy Enters But inevitably his newly-married jealousy begins to complicate everything, and the children are the first to feel it. Mother is torn between Dick's demand that she go with him on a three-day trip, and the claims of the feverish, bewildered be-wildered sick child upstairs. Dick says impatiently that kids don't die of upset stomachs, and Mother agrees with him. But she doesn't go off in any very gay spirits, just the same. The delicate attentions, the compliments, com-pliments, the murmured intoxicating intoxicat-ing promises all have faded out of Mother's life now; she is a har-rassed, har-rassed, overworked woman, with claims pouring in on every side-claims side-claims that she simply can't meet. She loves Dick, but she didn't expect, ex-pect, in marrying him. to have to give up all other loves completely |