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Show KATHLEEN NORMS Divorce Is a Dreadful Solution best check possible on Murray's father, too. ' Life with you is lopsided now. You are yourself extremely young and the care of a small restless boy is confining and anxious. In sending Murray to the life he so craves, you will win more than you lose. You can feel comfortable about him, for it is his father's obligation now to make you feel that the sacrifice was a wise one. But try to keep the arrangement flexible, so that if next summer you find yourself free for a few weeks of shore or mountains, it will be natural for them to grant it, and if in a few years and they go so fast Murray needs more special schooling school-ing than he can secure out in the horse country, he can rejoin you, and you can win his friendship all back again on a higher level. Life is full of these readjustments; readjust-ments; full of these terrible moments mo-ments when we feel that a realistic and generous attitude demands of us the very hardest thing life can offer. Anything else, we say in our anguished hearts, but not this! But time has a strange way of altering values. It doesn't make our children any less precious, but it does teach us when to let them go. "WHEN I WAS DIVORCED, four years ago, I was 21," writes Hazel Carroll, from Austin, Texas. "I charged Chester with intemperance and mental cruelty, and with my decree de-cree got custody of our son Murray, Mur-ray, now seven years old. But rart-ly rart-ly because the child was so devoted to his father, I agreed that Chester should have him for the vacation months, giving him to me for winter schooling. "While Chester lived with his mother in town this was all right; my own mother lived with me and shared the care of my lovely boy. Both mothers are now dead, and Chester has married a woman raised as he was on a horse farm; he has given up his bank job and lives among her relatives, all horse raisers. He seems devoted to his wife, who is six years older than he, and a pretty strong character. They have two girls. Son Is Problem "The problem is my son, Murray. By the present arrangement I have him for the difficult time; lessons, study, winter cold and winter amusements. To Chester he goes to a boy's paradise; he loves his little half-sisters, he loves every inch of the farm. He frets over my efforts at culture and instructive entertainment, entertain-ment, and cries for all the excitements excite-ments of training racers certainly not an ideal life for an Impressionable Impression-able child. "I have a fine position in a big wholesale house, and often have to make short buying trips. At these times I place Murray with my janitor's wife, and twice he has attempted at-tempted to run away, once being brought home by the police after a terrible night. ". . . to run away . . "Chester has asked me for sole custody, in a letter enclosing one from his wife. I am sick trying to think out what is best to do, and want your advice. Should a mother ever give up a small, trusting son of seven; can anyone else do for him what she can do? I've thought of trying to get Chester to shift our times of having Murray; he answers an-swers that he wants him completely, complete-ly, except for my three-weeks vacation, vaca-tion, if I want to take him to the mountains or shore. "Murray begs to go to his father, but I will not take that too seriously, if the present arrangement is best. I'll skip the agony the parting would be; my only consolatioa would be that he will feel none of it. But every mother knows what it means. It would take a Solomon tr answer, but I want to know what you think." Rare Case This is one of those rare cases, Hazel, when I truly believe that his mother is not the small boy's best j guardian. These circumstances are ' unusual. Apparently your husband's immaturity has ended; he has become be-come a responsible person, and the life he offers his son is not only wholesome for Murray, swept into a I big family group, but probably the j |