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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Riches Are More Than Finances THE MAN MY DAUGHTER is engaged to marry is not making enough money to support a home and a wife," writes Pauline Grace, from Austin, Texas, "We are New Yorkers, who came here because Maureen's lungs were affected by the eastern winters. Here she met her Ronny, whose pay is $45 a week. Now you know and I know, Mrs. Norris, that a young couple' can't live on little more than two thousand thou-sand a year: If there were children, privations and underprivileges would ruin their lives. Unfortunately Unfortunate-ly Fred, my husband, and I, cannot be of any regular financial help, as with prices what they are today it the right stuff, that pretty much everything worth while in life is theirs to command. Austin, like all our other important cities, will offer them free lectures, free lessons in languages, or in any science, free galleries, free concerts. The cocktail parties they must give up wouldn't be of any benefit to them, not in a thousand years. But the language or the trade they might perfect in three or four of those years might push them on to success. Lasting Friendship They'll find contacts and friendships friend-ships that are lasting. They'll find out how heartfilling it is to launch takes every cent we have to keep going at all, and Maureen's wedding wed-ding will set us back for some time. Will you put into one of your articles," arti-cles," the letter concludes, "what you think a fair income on which a young couple today, living in a southern city, may reasonably start?" Well, I'll tell you, Pauline. I think a young couple can begin on anything any-thing from $12,000 down to $1,200 a year. I expect a ream of angry letters about this, but I will hold my ground. Two persons can live on $100 a month, if they want to. "But live how!" the letters will scream. "Live like pigs, live on garbage, never have new clothes or amusements amuse-ments or a car, telephone, radio; never know what is comfort or peace of mind!" The $1,200 Income But that's just where you're wrong. The persons who have financial fi-nancial peace of mind are by no means the richest among us. Anyone Any-one who lives 'way over his income lives worried, and when you read forth alone into this unknown sea of poverty that is never want, and of simplicity that is never need. They'll get the finest medical care in the city, free, in clinics. Their two-room home on an obscure street may well become the place to which two rich and prominent middle-agers look back someday with a nostalgic ache in their hearts. This venture takes two things that not even the richest marriage can buy. One is lave, an element conspicuously con-spicuously lacking in most very prominent weddings. The other is courage. Love means that Maureen and Ronney trust each other; that they go into this thing wholeheartedly and hand in hand. The other means well, it means an essential to just about the most exciting experience life can offer young folk today. Men have traveled all over the world, and seen the Taj Mahal and the slums of Europe and the beaches of Honolulu, Hono-lulu, and haven't found the real adventure. But with life and $1,200 a year it is not 'only waiting, for any new venturers, but it is the background for success. i-AA -. ; . . smashed in a ring ..." of a pugilist who lets himself and his fame get smashed in a ring, or a movie star who has borrowed a hundred thousand to pay her income tax, you realize that that is true. One movie star who talked poor had an income of over three hundred thousand a year. But back to that $1,200 income. Could Maureen and her Ronny live as Mother and Dad do? Of course not. Could she live like her matron of honor, who has married the son of a rich family? Certainly not. But on $1,200 a year she may have all the richness of what I call the American adventure. She may prove, to her own and Ronny's enormous satisfaction, that the days of pioneering are not over. She may take that low income as a challenge, chal-lenge, and presently find herself writing articles or talking on the radio or instructing college groups of younger women in what she has learned from that experience. She must shed, to begin with, a great many of the artificial fine feathers that are cramping her contemporaries con-temporaries in their flight from realistic living. All pretence of having hav-ing more money than she has, all struggle to keep up with richer folk, must be abandoned at once. But when that is done, Ronny and Maureen may find, if they are of |