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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Children Are Precious Harvest he was tired on the Sunday morning when he wrote me, and maybe the youngsters were raising the roof, and maybe it was raining. Carter and Lil Neill have engaged in the most important business in the world. Of course it's a tiring and expensive and nerve-racking job, what else could it be? Of course it takes every bit of money they have, and the money is the least of it. But what a harvest they'll reap as these babies grow into lovely youth, and they have girls and boys in the house, turning to them, helping help-ing them paying them back hours of happiness for every one of today's to-day's minutes of care. Growing up is a painful business. But if every couple who married saw marriage as a time of growing up, a chance to be better and stronger strong-er and less selfish in the new life, what a world we'd have! There are a great many vocations and employments em-ployments for women today, but Lil has the best of them. Years of rest are ahead for Lil and Carter. And what will be one of the heartaches of those years? Why, looking back to just such mornings as the one on which Carter Car-ter wrote me his good-natured, tongue-in-the-cheek complaint. He and Lil will turn over the photograph albums then with a longing long-ing backward look at the days when they brought Kittens home from the hospital and Tom broke bis leg and Penny strolled away and was lost all day. If anything in life is worth while, the nursery is worth while. If anything any-thing in life fills the hearts of a man and woman with a joy that no other earthly sensation touches, it's when their children are about them, and the line of little faces looks up grinning over its oatmeal. Carte? knows he is lucky. "TITHEN LIL and I were first married we had a lot of fun," writes a 34-year-old husband from Wichita. "We danced, we had a gang of pals, we had wedding present pres-ent checks to fix us up in a nice place, and, darn it," Carter Neill goes on youthfully, "Lil wore pretty things, we went off for summer week-ends, well we had fun! It makes me mad to look at the old snapshots in her books. Swimming, tennis, weeny roasts, beaches, and the rest. "Now it's nine years since we've had any of that. I make twice as much money, but we never have a cent. Do you want to know the reason? I'll tell you. It's Babby, 9, Tom, 8, Patricia and Penelope, 5, Gary, 3 and Kittens, 1. Yessir, we have six of 'em. Twenty-four meals a day, how's that? And enough cookies cook-ies and chocolate bars and potato chips in between meals to set up a grocery. "Last winter we had whooping cough in November, and the coughs stopped at Easter. We thought we were going to lose Penny. Lil has a washing machine, bought with some of the thousand her father left her, and Babby's a swell help. But my kick is that there is never a moment of peace in this house. If it isn't yelling from Kittens, it's Patsy and Pen tearing things to pieces, Tom crying because he doesn't does-n't like bis teacher, everyone asking if he or she mayn't have a pal overnight or go somewhere overnight. over-night. The big ones think we spoil the little ones, and Ihe little ones raise the roof if the big ones are going to a Saturday movie without them. By the Book "I bought a book," this harassed parent continues, "about how to raise children the modern way. " ... at bad fun ..." Well, Lil and I simply can't handle that. We don't go in for inhibitions and complexes. When Tom brought a $5 bill from school and said he found it, I took it back, and Tom got whaled. When Babby set up a martyr complex and said she would not go to a party in her old dress, Lil told her that was all right, she needn't go. She went, by the way; I took her. And she was the prettiest kid there. "We have a good-sized place, fruit trees, and a shed I'm going to turn into a theater for them someday. They're good kids, too. But sometimes I think I'd like just a few weeks of the old freedom and the old fun, and to see Lil when she isn't possessed by anxiety for one or the other of the kids. What's life worth if you have to spend every cent you make for shoes, pancakes, cough medicine and didy dolls?" The writer of this letter. Carter NeilL is a hypocrite, and I think I would love him. He is bursting with pride in his four adorable little girls and bis two sons, as what sane man wouldn't be? But maybe |