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Show ' " ; : ; ; ; ; : ; : ; ; ; ; ; ; i i " . II MARY lis fj SUCCEEDS l ' t i : ; ; ON i I MAIN STREET j :: i ;: ;: ; 1 i ;: J, By LAURA MILLER ijj :: !: ; ! i i ! i ! i i ; ; ! ! ! ; ;;";; ; ; : ; (cj by Laurd Miller THE YOUNG OLD WOMAN "Old Man Coolidge and Old Woman Coolidge" would be the respectful way in which a delegation of Indians would describe the first two citizens of our land. Long since they discovered that honor and responsibility and wisdom fit mighty well on heads that have learned by experience how to make a home, rear a family, get along with the neighbors, and otherwise make a success of life. But the eighty-three-year-old editor of Farm and Ranch is a solitary, dramatic dra-matic figure in our civilization, where we love to put a cap on "grandma" and set her In the chimney corner, a pensioner on our bounty, without interests in-terests or hopos sometimes without even friends. Mrs. S. E. Buchanan of Dallas might have been just such a grandma, only she chose not to. At fifty, she had reared a large family of her own children and started many grandchildren off In the world. But she had no job that was especially her own. So she made one. She became be-came "Aunt Sally," who for thirty-three thirty-three years has been writing, out of her overflowing experience, on the problems of living. The friends and followers of "Aunt Sally's" column have come to consider con-sider themselves members of an informal in-formal league; they number now probably 50,000. They offer her "handshakes," as she calls her friendly friend-ly letters, "from Maine to Mexico, even Alaska; occasionally there Is a foreign for-eign visitor from Brazil, Central America or Japan. "Business is a new and sometimes difficult life for a girl to find herself in," this adviser of many girls has found. "It's best to begin at home where the influences of home and former for-mer associations can assist her." She sent me the facts for this story with permission to "dress 'em up," and then wrote me post-haste, "Now that It's entirely out of my reach, Tm stricken with stage fright. I'm shocked at having said so much about myself. I never did It before. Do please suppress sup-press the ego In the story I" Anybody would feel like confiding in and depending on "Aunt Sally." She's wholesome, and quite unspoiled by her power. Her wildest recreation Is an occasional piece of fancywork. She's so comfortably old-fashioned that she'd rather answer from 500 to-GOO to-GOO letters a month by hand than have them go through the artificiality of a stenographer's assistance. |