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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Secret of Security Is Revealed Marylou, 6. Bad ages to make children feel the pinch of poverty. Live Simply "It was then that I wrote to you," this letter goes on, "and you told me to begin to look down, instead of up. To live more and more simply, sim-ply, rather than to continually expand. ex-pand. To endure the children's consternation con-sternation then, for the sake of the children's future. "Well, we did. In fact, we had to. We moved to a rather lonely and shabby place, we started growing grow-ing vegetables, selling eggs, we did everything. My stricken husband became convalescent, slowly, slowly, slow-ly, slowly, and can walk around his little farm now. We've not had one moment's . money worry since we moved, and that's six years ago. We've no money left over, but we have the 'makings,' and we have three children of whom we can really be proud. "They rose to this crisis in a way that makes my eyes fill when I think of it. Their father never heard one single word of complaint. And as we began to see that on the slimmest of margins we really could make it, the exhilaration of being so low that you couldn't go any lower began to inspire us all." SUPPOSE we drop that word "security?" "se-curity?" In the sense that it is used today there is no such thing, and we would all be happier not thinking about it and not worrying about it. In the long-ago days when I was facing a rather formidable world, we never used the word "security." We didn't know that there was such a word. We certainly didn't suspect that there was such a thing. There were six of us in family, the eldest was not quite 21. We had been raised in a comfortable, old-fashioned old-fashioned family fashion, we knew nothing of the city in which we suddenly had to make a living. We never, in nine years of good hard fighting and working for food and shelter, had five cents in the bank. There was nobody in sight to help us and we never were helped. But as we knew nothing of security, se-curity, we went along with great confidence and a great deal of happiness. hap-piness. Often the end of the week found us without a cent, but usually there were nourishing, if unpretentious, unpre-tentious, meals in the house, and there were beds made, and lots of books, and the long beaches of the Pacific to walk along and picnic pic-nic on and in a state of shocking insecurity we managed magnificently. magnificent-ly. Lean Weeks H6w we did it I haven't the faintest faint-est idea. I imagine that statistics of those days wouldn't be believed today. There were lean weeks but there were fat ones, too. Everything Every-thing we had in the way of writing paper, candy, clothes, books, food, was common property, and when better days began the sharing went on, and does to this day. The effect of these so-called hard times was curious. It taught me that utter and complete insecurity is not half as fearful a thing as it ". . . the long beaches . . ." sounds, and, once experiencing it, one never can fear it again. There is always something one can do; there are always possible changes and makeshifts and plans and experiments, ex-periments, and all of them are immensely im-mensely stimulating. So that real security, by one of life's most ridiculous paradoxes, is insecurity. "What we feared was for the children," writes Agnes Fairfield, whose splendid letter from Johnstown Johns-town set me thinking along this line. "Lew and I didn't care about ourselves. our-selves. We'd both been nicely raised, in the American way. I mean a small-town 8-room house, trees, car, high school, and hopes for college. But Lew had only two years business school, and I went into kindergarten work, and held a job for four years. But we wanted better things for our children, fine clothes, associates, amusements, and when our plans went smash we felt keenly for them, and indeed they did for themselves. They were then Deary, 14, Junior, 12, and |