Show WHAT tt DO DRES E SM A MEAN beay TO M MODERN ade RIV GIRLS A men follow the line of least resistance it 11 a jumble 0 ot genial voices suggests all going to the rough house it seems a good thing to do at the momen moment tand and off the whole swarm goes by KATHLEEN NORRIS f are afraid to get amen j rd married a r i I 1 e d nowadays i V J a middle aged doctor said at a dinner ainner par j i ty recently women are so darned independent ind and they can do so much on their own that there much a man can offer them I 1 it used to be he went on resentfully sent fully that a girl wanted to get married to be independent marriage meant freedom it meant that she was more important than her sisters who sat around waiting for beaus to show up she had her new name and her new house and a lot of new clothes and she was just in heaven but today they have their new homes without bothering to get married when a girl feels like it she says to the old folks that she wants to live by herself and oil off she goes thousands of young women have broken away from the home nest just as the boys used to do and making their own money too just like the boys they can stay out nights entertain their friends go to what shows or what parties they like and they think things over pretty seriously before they decide to settle down with just one man and confine their amusements to what amuses him and their expenditures to what he can afford im looking he concluded mournfully for one of those shy little retiring women who raise big grateful 9 blue eyes to the man chos going to rescue them from parental tyranny and who want to run for slippers and babble about tile the baby and adore the man of the family for the next fifty beth in little women someone suggested exactly Exact lyl the first speaker said emphatically why dont women get onto the fact that men like em loving and quiet and cudd cuddly lyl nobody was cruel enough to answer him as he should have been answered but perhaps a good many of us u were thinking tile the same thing perhaps we were all longing to remind him that twenty years ago when he was twenty five no girl could be giddy or extravagant or artificial or shallow enough for him he followed every will of the wisp in in petticoats that came his way and finally settled his affections upon a certain pretty saucy little married woman who sense enough to control her own random affections much less rebuff ills his the affair of the handsome doctor and the little married woman entertained their less charitable friends for several years it was just one of those pleasant cles cies between a handsome man and an idle woman in which everyone knows that there is not the least HARM but which manages to make a good husband feel cheap and cheated and which takes mother way from a small boy in the late afternoons alter Ner at tea time when the husband finally got up his courage to ask for a divorce and took the little it boy boi away with him the pretty little wife was less pretty and less pert and the big doctor drifted instantly and quietly out of the picture in the way the beaus of married women always seem to know instinctively now a few years after all this the doctor could perfectly well marry his onetime one time sweetheart ashes still free but instead he rails at the independence of the modern girl and longs tor for a cudd loine little wife lizebeth like lik eBeth beth mara the truth is that youn 11 jont want domestic honest ati onate wives or find them up to the age of thirty five some men wont look at a sensible woman they are all for the girls who drink and jazz and pet who obtain money somehow by hook or crook from dad or a brother or in any other possible way who waste it all on red finger nails and matinee seats who work a manfor man roan for champagne and orchids and then triumphantly tell the other girls how easy he is the more completely imbecile a girl is the better she succeeds in the circles of night clubs and cocktail parties indeed a good many girls assume a baby babi lisp and an idiot stare for those occasions waiting to hear Lu lucienne clenne ie boyer I 1 was sitting near near one of these long lashed over gouged half nude little littie anomalies one night and over ovar hearing she mind what she said she said yare says yew and oh essen approximately a thousand times and very little else she varied the accent and intonation on the words cleverly as jungle savages do their hunh and she was a great social success with young men stumbling tumbling and tottering about her all evening long right in in the same biggest city there were a lot of other girls tucked up and sound asleep at that hour but with young blood in their veins young desire young longing to be popular and do things and go places there were girls who know that somewhere in in the world are men who like honest planning and talking like books and plays and gardens and politics and history and social questions along with the love making girls ready to become splendid wives and the mothers of fine little girls and boys these girls have their opinions too like the doctor with whose embittered remarks I 1 started this article it seems a shame one of them wrote to me a few weeks ago that when you feel the way I 1 feel you cant admit it I 1 live at home because I 1 love my home and my own people but a widowed sister with three babies also lives there and two brothers still in school and seven other persons as well my mother is is dead and my father loves us to be home playing cards with him or reading or talking and consequently I 1 dont have much of a chance to meet men socially for the rest I 1 im m a kindergarten teacher and that moans means a lot more work than it used to mean the children begin to gather at half past eight and I 1 have to be there and what with organized games and rehearsals hear and late calls from mothers and reports and putting up exhibitions hibit ions and distributing prizes im rarely home until after five and tired then id just lul like some lonely man to know that I 1 im m on the market she ended nobody has to ask me to marry him unless he wants to but friendship and companionship are among the beautiful things in the world and im twenty eight and I 1 dont want all the miracles to pass in me e by this girl lives in in a missouri city in that same city on the q quiet biet evening when nhen she wrote this letter night clubs were going full blast and men without much money to spend were ordering quarts of champagne and were leaning over girls who were scented with drink and tobacco whose shoulders and backs were completely bare and whose conversation was confined to the aforesaid yare lissen and says yew some of these men would much rather have been walking along some fresh quiet star lighted street under trees with an intelligent gent woman companion discussing the question of a movie or a theatre or a little supper somewhere after the walk most men even when young like reality rather than sham they like to get SOME value for the money they spend but we all do things we dont really want to do in this queer world we all see the persons who bore us and miss the ones we really love we all go to parties we despise rather than having the courage to say no we all waste money on the letter and let the spirit of living escape through our clumsy hands men follow the line of the least resistance if a jumble of genial voices suggests all going to the rough house it seems a good thing to do at the moment and off the whole swarm goes that the cover charge at the rough house is 5 that the air is is thick with unwholesome smells of perspiration and dust and cheap food and cheap drink and cheap perfume that the colored men who sing in in the dim light are not musicians and the men who toil in the kitchen are not cooks means nothing until someone has to pay the bill if decent men in search ol 01 decent wives would do a little advertising would let it be known the girls have to worry there would be whole groups of men in in every social circle ready to convince fine girls that they are not obliged to change their ideals to find their rightful places and their rightful mates 0 bell syndicate NU service |