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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Find Happiness in Present Lot lUTlMI CATES is a Philadelphia 1 woman who represents a large class, and a very unhappy class. She is afraid she is losing her mind. Our hospitals just now unfortunately unfortu-nately are full of women in similar situations, and all doctors count these cases by the dozen. Nothing is really the matter with Mimi, but she has managed to work herself her-self into a state when she trembles and perspires for no apparent cause, can't eat, can't sleep, cries constantly, hates solitude, hates company, and generally is causing her husband, her children, her mother and everyone else who loves her alternate states of impatience im-patience and despair. The secret of all this is that Mimi is bored with her job. She may not know it, but that explains it all. She's tired of dust and dishes and budgeting and watching the market, and the dentist and the bridge club and her winter hat and half-melted snow and everything else. When a woman loves her job, she is well. When she hates it, she sometimes goes into these phycho-pathic phycho-pathic disorders. Mimi is headed for the mental hospital. She will not be happy there. ' She will be doing there some of the jobs she might be doing peacefully at home, only instead of household duties they call them occupational therapy. here. I only say to women like Mimi make your present job a success first. Forget yourself. Plunge with absolute passion into the business of creating an ideal home, to which a happy man and eager children can't wait to return after the day. You can do it. Then think out the line in which you would like to express yourself, the sort of work you know you could do. Get ready for it, and just as sure as you do, you'll find it. Perhaps it's writing children's stories. You've always known you could, but after a few tries, you've stopped. Perhaps it's doing pastel portraits, or acting in radio plays, or, designing dresses, making political po-litical speeches. Or possibly there's a good future for you in somewhat humbler lines. Women have won all the good things women love money, travel, fame because they saw some little lit-tle gap in the familiar domestic setup, and filled it with some very special bread, or apron, or jam, or method of helping children study, or the patenting of a sweater. And believe me, when success comes that way, in easier finances, in the royal right to give the ones you love the extra delights, and luxuries for which they long, in the flattering recognition of your friends, you'll find that success is sweeter than most of sugary stuff. The crackling divorces of the world's great ought to be proof to us all that happiness is a quality quali-ty brewed in a much quieter atmosphere. atmo-sphere. For if you reach your goal with no one to love, money and fame are only the more maddening. Need for Success Under Mimi's discontent, that raging restlessness that sweeps her off her feet at intervals, making mak-ing everyday home life utterly insufferable, in-sufferable, is a half-recognized feverish need for success; the sort of success with which magazines and newspapers are full. Travel, excitement, mink coats, fame, money, these are being displayed . . hates solitude, company . . ." to Mimi all day long. Wherever she turns she sees the complacent pictures of other women, not much younger and not any smarter than she is, women floating in a very sea of adulation and luxury. The women of past generations didn't worry about these things because, be-cause, for one thing, there were no radios, movies, illustrated magazines, maga-zines, to keep them perpetually tortured by contrast. And for another thing housekeeping, home-making, home-making, mothering, wifehood, were all jobs of much more importance im-portance and repute. Successful professional women, Rachel, George Eliot, Bernhardt, were regarded re-garded with an admiration that had no envy in it. The highest profession was that of the wife; and incidentally she had a lot more to do. Now much could be said and has been said, of the deceptive appearance appear-ance of flashing successes in Hollywood, Holly-wood, on the stage, or in the spotlight spot-light of sensational marriages and divorces. But saying it only makes fame-thirsty obscure young women wom-en angry. They'll take the fame and the money, thanks, and take chances on later disillusionment, and being forgotten. Forget yourself So I omit such moralizatlons |