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Show FEMINISTS, OR JUST FOLKS? Cub reporters on city papers, according accord-ing to women readers, love to turn their cynical vocabulary loose in articles ar-ticles about "lady legislators," "lady mayors" and others horn they conceive con-ceive to be freak f Ainists. Unless somebody gets all the women mayors together, no one can know what sort they really are. But here Is an actual interview by mail with cne of them: Two years ago Mary Paddock went to Florida. She had done her work, she felt, for two sons and four daughters daugh-ters to whom she had been both father and mother, were grown and gone out into the world. Driving south from Palm Beach she found what seemed the ideally peaceful spot in which she "might at least conscientiously indulge In a life of selfish ease with time to read and study and play." "In the little village of Lantana, beside be-side the still waters of beautiful Lake Worth, nestled a cottage. It was picturesque, inviting, ye secluded. Graceful coconut palms and fruit trees surrounded and shaded it. It was scarcely nine miles from Palm Beach, yet Lantana was a quiet, tiny village, barely incorporated. A few weeks later I found myself the h jpy owner of the cottage. My daughter was with me. My one idea seemed about to be fulfilled; here I should find peace and pleasure, living a quiet, leisurely Ufa In ideal environment "But alas! Before many weeks the mayor of the little town was forced to resign on account of m health. I was persuaded to allow my name to appear on the ticket to fulfil the unexpired term. "You know the outcome. I woke up one day to find that I was a full-fledged full-fledged mayor. I can't say that I felt any happiness over the honor conferred con-ferred upon me. But I decided to do my best to make a success of this new and responsible undertaking. "A charter for a town of a few hundred hun-dred inhabitants." Mrs. Paddock Im. agines, "is as weird and wonderful nn instrument as the one under which New York's Tammany Hall rose to fame. And a mayor's work Is absorbingly absorb-ingly Interesting, when aided by I ar tana folks' spirit of co-opo;-ijtln." ' |