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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Lost Confidence and Illusions "TTOW CAN WE HELP our 1 daughter?" writes Lucy Cotton, Cot-ton, from Duluth. "Fay is 24, our only child, but we had my nieces, whom I will call Meg and Emily, living with us for many years. Emily married at 19, three years ago, and has a baby son. Meg worked in an insurance office and was married last year. "Neithr girl is actually as pretty pret-ty as our Fay, but both are attractive, attrac-tive, confident and popular. Of their small estate only a few hundreds are left, but Fay will inherit enough from us and her grandparents to be financially independent. However, How-ever, both Harry and I thought that she should find occupation, too. She completed a course as a kinder-gartner, kinder-gartner, but did not care for the work; later she and a friend opened a tea and gift shop, in which her interest in-terest did not last long. The girls sold out, and Fay went in seriously for amateur theatricals, having real talent in character and comic parts. She also worked hard as property woman and prompter, and we hoped she was reaUy started. Imaginary Infatuations "However, a year ago, she began to give unmistakable signs of nervous nerv-ous disorder. She shut herself away from us, sometimes was absolutely silent and moody, sometimes talked fast in what a psychologist later called 'elation.' (We took her to our best mental man, who did help, and papers her engagement to a man I am convinced never had the slightest slight-est romantic feeling for her. He is a business associate of her father's fa-ther's which makes it the more em-barrasing. em-barrasing. Reporters telephoned him, and he went to see Harry, and we were saved publicity, at least, but Fay took the matter very lightly, laughing it off by saying that apparently the man had changed his mind. 'Whom your fastidious daughter had the honor to refuse!' she will say when any man's name is in the paper; whether wheth-er he is engaged, or going to the front, or has been given some honor or promotion. "My husband and I can't bear to see her going on into middle-age like this. When she was a small girl she did romance about things; we expected her to outgrow it. But it seems she never has. How can we help her?" Since she is still very young, and since she has some property to give her a sense of security, I would, in her case, spike her guns in advance. You and her father love her enough to do this subtly and tenderly. Don't harp on it. But remind re-mind her often that you see through it. Tell her that you and her friends know that she wants to marry, that it is quite natural, but that only by occupying herself in some hnsnital nr Red Cross or charitv work so terribly needed now on all sides! can she learn to forget herself, distinguish truth from fable, and make real friends among the sort of men who interest her. Perhaps your strongest argument will be that if she decides to grow up now she can make a good life for herself, but that in 10 years she will be confirmed as the simpering, sim-pering, flirtatious old maid. In self-protection she has worked up a flock of romances for herself, and childishly exults in them, unconscious un-conscious of the fact that these fables don't make sense. . , best mental man . . advised care, love and time as the cure.) From what she told him he gathered that jealousy of her cousins, cous-ins, perhaps unconscious, was partly part-ly the cause. "Fay seemed better, and for a few months was more like her old self. But now there is a new phase, infinitely distrubing to me. It began, be-gan, I see now, when she told me last summer that her psychologist was not only in love with her, but had made improper advances. , As he is a married man of 50, with three sons, I was at first shocked, and then incredulous. I persuaded my husband to talk her into giving up treatments from this man, which she did. "To make the rest of the story short, Fay now believes, or at least asserts, that at least half the men she meets are infatuated with her. Her cousins' husbands, their male relatives, our clergyman, even the postman and grocer are all by turns supposedly under her sway, and she relates her affairs with these men with a relish that makes my heart ache with pity and shame. "How Can We Help Her?" "Yesterday she announced to the |