Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Whose Fault If Marriage Fails OLDER PEOPLE can yOU L take some of the blame for forthe forthe forthe the fact that one marriage out of every four goes on the rocks writes Madelon Clay from St. St Louis Im happy now with a n second see sec ond husband tt her letter goes on but therell there'll always be a little ache in my heart that Garth and andI I threw away our young love and young marriage What destroyed us both join was our families and our friends Both families were Jealous and possessive My mother telephoned every morning and expected to be told old every detail of my life llie Garth's mother felt that he had made a silly marriage and never was anything anything any- any thing hing but cold and formal with me She telephoned too too asking him to 3 H up ana anu see ee her iier me ume minutes he stayed and frequently urging him to telephone me that hIs lis mother was not very well and andic he ic was staying with her for dinner Then there were our friends Garth and I were both still In college college col- col lege ege my father paying me a i month from a small trust fund Garth's mother allowing him the same sum Garth worked some nights helping a professor and I worked In a tea shop Saturday aft aft- We were deep In love and determined that our great venture should be a success A Joke But to our school friends It wasn't a great adventure it was a joke oke They made great fun of us the he boys pitying Garth for his loss of freedom the girls either flirting with him or trying to persuade me that hat he was no good They came in every afternoon four or five of them drank our liquor and wasted our time The school gossip began to seem pretty out-dated out to us we wanted to be he alone for walks and study We were never left eft undisturbed and we could no longer afford the old amusements I But they couldn't see that at all I I fl boys pitying Garth I They called us tight And sometimes sometimes some some- times it got so that Garth would be talked into something and I would feel it was a waste of money or I would be dying to go to something and Garth could see nothing but the financial side ide Everything conspired conspire l to make things hard The summer was terribly terribly terribly ter ter- ter- ter hot our house small and odorous a baby was coming and andI I 1 was miserable all the time My mother wanted us to come to my old home to live and Garth wouldn't and his mother was angry because we were having a baby at all She said she had known just what a slovenly sort of at life lite I would drag him into and was not surprised Then came the night when four friends came in at five drank our liquor went out for tor more and more ice and stayed around until nearly eight In desperation I asked them to stay for an Impromptu meal which turned out to be bc so skimpy that Garth furious and ashamed took us all aU to dinner The bill Wl was wa 28 and the other two boys said they'd match him for it They did match and Garth lost and everyone put in 50 cents to pay our sitter So Silly Now It all seems so silly now but we quarreled all that hot night and at three in the morning the thought of my lovely airy room at nt home and Mothers Mother's generous table was just too much for me and I took little Garth and went home My boy Is 6 now He knows that the good man who Is baby Joys Joy's father Isn't his father He knows his Daddy lives with another woman and calls her his wife wite Its It's horribly unfair to him And wasn't the whole thing unfair to Garth and me Shouldn't we have had some help been given a chance Am I prejudiced or is this so No youre you're not prejudiced and inde indeed d dit it It Is so M Madelon de on W We outsiders outsiders out out- siders are far tar too much inclined to take young marriages only for what they mean to us Unmarried friends drift in upon the newlyweds Intent only on Idle amusement and very often mischievous interference and mothers and fathers jealously try to hold tight to the old ties Often mothers and fathers feel that their responsibility for a loved daughters daughter's happiness her clothes and amusements and activities generally gen is increased rather than lessened lessened lese les les- les by her marriage And their loving claims and interference confuse confuse con con- fuse and trouble the young wife As for the boy and girl chums of yesterday who want to make the whole thing a joke they do much more harm than they ever dream To be constantly obliged to apologize for old Stan who always acts that way puts a strain on th the young husband |