Show KATHLEEN NORRIS how smart Is a smart girl EVEN YEARS AGO I 1 had a letter S SEVEN from a girl named rosamond lee her situation was a terrible one I 1 clipped the rame from the letter and destroyed it but I 1 tiled filed the letter itself because I 1 hoped to hear from rosamond again rosamond had had three years as an invalid from polio between the ages of 13 to 18 16 therefore when she entered college in a town miles away it was as a special student nobody watched her and nobody cared about her marks she had come from a tine fine home there were two brothers one sister and devoted parents they know that rosamond met a boy named jack parker at college and began to spend her afternoons and many nights in the one room shack where parker lazed away a supposedly artistic existence what parker felt was unimportant rosamond was deeply in love after some months of this she discovered two things one was that she was going to have a baby and the other was that parker not only had another regular girl visitor to his love nest but that a third girl this one living in a sorority house had attempted suicide on his account felt like a heel rosamond then wrote me the most frenzied letter I 1 have ever re received c elved from any girl she was ha half lf mad with shock ang anger r despair shame every frightful emotion a girls heart can know before she had my letter in answer she and parker had found a doctor who performed the operation that killed 3 deeply in love her child and that killed rosamond too though she lived until last week then her mother wrote me that she had died of 0 anaemia the mother wanted parker to marry rosamond parker explained that he felt like a heel beel to use his own term hut but that now the second girl was pregnant too and he felt that he owed her honorable marriage it if anything could have added to the weight of rosa monds utter humiliation it was this but she was helpless and her mother was helpless arid her ID 19 year old brother whose one idea was to shoot parker was helpless too for even he saw that help anyone so Ro family went home and she got into war work and after a few years married a tine fine man who was in the marines whit what he thought ot of her story I 1 dont know but I 1 know she told him te truth they had one little girl and it was while he was away in the south seas that it became becam e certain that rosamonda Ro health had been fatally affected by the operation years earlier she had nener really recovered boasting of ills his conquests our girl knew she was going and she confided her little katy to my care her mother wrote poor child from her year a she he knew nothing but suffering first the terrible polio which she bore with such cheerfulness and courage then her college experience with that contemptible insufferable man who did not eventually marry even the other girl but Is still probably boasting of hs his conquest then the physical agonies of a septic condition that almost cost her her life and then her own shame at having to tell peter that she was not the innocent delicate girl she seemed and now for months to 0 face leaving all she loved and to die at 23 28 the story Is finished now 1 says the mothers letter except tor for her father and me who can never forget my husband has been a changed man in these years I 1 know I 1 myself am changed she knew rosamond knew exactly what she was doing when she gave in to this mans persuasion she was always a wise little thing she had haa spent long years reading and studying when other girls are going to first dances and house parties what baffles us how could she do it why sho she drifted into it just as other girls all over the union are drifting into the same arrangement right now it seems thrilling it seems harmless to let young passion have its way and to believe what the adoring young oung man so confidently asserts that nobody Is going abing to be hurt by it not even themselves sure going to be married when parker gets a job meanwhile he does so want her to be sweet and loving and stop worrying this seems to be his biggest concern about her she gives in |