Show DOROTHY DIX TALKS F r DOROTHY DIX the World Worlds World's Paid pah Woman Writer 1 ANCESTORS SHOULD BE AN AU INSPIRATION NOT A DEAD WEIGHT TO THE LIVING MAKE LIVING MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR LIFE AS THEY DID OF 0 THEIRS AND DONT DON'T BE RULED BY GHOSTS GIRL GR came to me ie In n great the other day The gist of her A tale of o woe WO wa was that sho ho was teas In l love with t a toung 3 oung man whom her r mother considered her social ocIal inferior Interior and would not fiot hear ot oZ E hot hor hormal mal tying K U mother has hils ha any just objection to could that lie he was wao Intemperate a- a said sald the girl It tf she say or Immoral or a well neer I would n to her and aad obey her when she Bhe tells me that I must never see ee him any ony more and that It will kill her bel 1 If I marry y him But she he cant can't brIng a single charge that Is lo worth paying any attention to 0 against him He Ho Is everything that Is tine fine and upright In a I man Rod and he be has hM already made a aJ ac place for tor himself In la the world and Is going on to tobe J c jY be big and to boast of The And what Me are we i to fag end of an aristocratic old race that has run seed aced 1 Mother Is 1 always alway talking about our blue blood and believe me It gets bluer nIX DIX and bluer all the time from anemia because we wa are so poor that we are half fed Moth Mother er Is I always telling me how my great grandmother wore a point lace dress and danced with Lafayette That doesn't mean moan athing a athing athIng thing In my young life I want a decent frock for once and to be able to dance myself In smart emart restaurants Mother I Is always bragging about our ancestor who was a signer algner of the Declaration of Independence Id I'd swap him off any day for a aman man man who could sign a check k that commanded respect at the bank I II y I DONT DON'T mean to disparage my ancestors I honor and respect them then I but I dont don't feel teel called upon to tall fall down and worship them then as mother and the Chinese day No doubt they were worthy and energetic peo peo- people and made the most they could o ot their lives lles and opportunities I IS S ant to do the same nith l mine If It they had bad sat down and worshipped 1 forbears and been afraid to make a move lest they thay should shock their august shades they wouldn't have got anywhere either and we wouldn't have been called upon to make sacrifices to their memory And anyway I am alive and I dont don't want the dead to rule me Why should I who lives In a new world with new traditions new standards be dominated by ghosts of the past Its It's absurd Its It's Idiotic 1 I UTE ITE ARE as poor as Jobs Job's turkey We were halt half starved and wen went Y VT i about looking like figures figure of fun In patched up old finery yet I Imply had bad to defy mother and go to work in spite of her because no lady of ot my family had over ever earned an honest dollar and she wept to think hat s hat great Aunt Clorinda Cloi would have said about about it It She thought It so eo much more elegant to be hungry and shabbily genteel than to make a comfortable living and be in independent dependent by my own labor And when anybody called me a working girl she ahe nearly died of shame hame But the she would have been as proud as Punch If I had sold old old myself In marriage to arich a arich arich rich old man who could have given me pearls pearla pearl and a limousine DOTH g of my brothers are failures In reality they are nothing buD but tut BOTH loafers because they are too proud to do the kind of work theare they are fitted for tor or to make an humble bumble beginning They are the kind who I would accept a situation as a bank president but who scorn a job John the man I want to marry started out as an office boy when ho he ft as as fourteen years old and aDd now he Is In the firm for tor which he be started to work He Ho has haa energy enterprise ambition and initiative every every quality that my brothers lack w He has not only not asked a dollar of anybody or a help helping ing hand but he has supported his hla widowed mother and edu edu- educated educated his younger brothers and sisters while my brothers have depended on their family name and their family Influence and anda C a felt that because they were my grandfathers grandfather's grandsons that special places should be made for them th m And to my thinking the man who stands on his own feet and fight his hla way through IS ten times more more- morea a manlier man than the on one who Is Just aleaner a aleaner aleaner leaner Y R MOTHER calls John uncouth and uneducated because he doesn't l I l always know just which fork and spoon to use and he is guilty of lonal lapses In grammar He lie doesn't know anything about the Sall realists and he likes phonograph music She contrasts with his tastes ith the cultured ones o of my brothers who know a 1 alot lot Jot more about the new movement in literature than they do about the thc last Jast quotations In the stock market What she doesn't grasp Is that there are different kinds kInd of education different brands of knowledge and that John may know little about books but he knows a million vital practical things that are really important E ISN'T dull and stupid He lIe has a mind as keen as a sword sA a HI mind that is marvelously balanced a forward looking mind and a judgment that Is almost unerring John may not read novels but all of life Is an open book to him He doesn't know a thing about the science of ogy L I ogy but he sees seea into the very depths depth of peoples people's souls and their motives are as transparent and glass to him He goes to the very heart of the truth of every subject Maybe all of this Isn't culture but Its It's It wisdom Its It's life Itself U A ND John Is on his way He Ite Is going up and ond he lie Is going to arrIve AND not only In a way but culturally and socially He lie Is learning from froni ever ever everybody body with whom he comes In contact He Is ac ac- ac acquiring quiring polish and his wife Is Ie never going to have occasion to be ashamed of ot him And And And-and and said aId the girl wiping her heT eyes I I an am going to be that woman mother or no mother Im I'm not going to be like my Aunt Clarissa v who ho let the family keep her from marrying a poor pool young oung chap she a as in lo e lo lowith lo with and whom they called led common ps as they do my John They lived to see him a senator and rich and his wires wire's limousine splashing the mud on her as she trudged along th the streets on foot toot I Good said I Marry your John and found your own fam fam- famIly family ily lly Instead of wasting your life worshipping at the shrine of dead and gone ancestors ancestor DOROTHY DIX Copyright 1923 by Public Ledger Company |