Show kathleen norris says dont marry at seventeen beu syndicate service she wont listen and she wont talk she merely laughs and looks bored and is off with him for hows of giggling and confidences telling him I 1 suppose just what old fashioned idiots her father and mother are by KATHLEEN girls are in ave MOST when seventeen but fortunately the boys to whom they lose their hearts are about seventeen too quite unable to face the responsibilities of home and bills and family neither boys nor girls take these affairs too seriously and presently their school days are over and they are dancing and working and going to movies and planning more seriously as they leave the teens behind them when the girl is seventeen however and the man ten years older the situation is not so simple she is an innocent giddy curious young thing who is merely in love with love he is more calculating ready to settle down and more than ready to take advantage 0 her inexperience it is a safe rule that when a young girl wants to marry a man some years older one who has no lob who has already had one unfortunate marital experience and whom her family dislikes she is heading for a wreck stubborn seventeen yet girls can be stubborn at 17 they do this owr and over again and from one girls bitter experience and costly mistakes no other girl seems able to learn witness joan whose mothers letter ea on my desk this morning our girl has been raised on your advice printed in the sunday paper writes the mother from knoxville for years ive quoted you and twice ive written you direct joan was our only child until she was 10 then a son came to share honors weve always treated her reasonably ashes bad her share of household duties alternate sundays we have had open house for her friends it has been as normal and sweet a childhood as any girl to the land could have hes 35 and no good what could we have done that we do to save her from what has happened now to make the story short a man came to town three months ago and was suddenly included in all the plans of joans little set nobody seems to know quite how or why he is about 35 slightly bald small fair talkative and thoroughly no good he has had two lobs in this time held neither one he has never explained even to joan what the trouble was be twerp his wife and himself or what wera the circumstances of their divorce joan is madly in love with him she will be of age on december 3 and they plan to be married that day she wont listen and she wont talk she merely laughs and looks bored and is off with him tor hours of giggling and confidences telling him I 1 suppose just what old fash boned idiots her father and mother are joans mind set my husband insisted on a talk with him bs said he could not pin this roy jones down to anything roy kept saying that bis one thought was joans happiness and that he loved her we talked to joan no use she is like a girl under a spell cant you wont you alp us bring her back to cantty Is there a cure no theres no sure cure when the bewitchment of so called first love tails upon a girls young heart words mean nothing to her home ties mean nothing common sense he little she ever had gone FOOLISH LOVE frantic parents tell kathleen NOT ns that their 17 year old daughter is madly in love with a hormess man of 35 they come to her for advice asking what they can do to bring their daughter to her senses before it 11 too late miss norbu regrets to admit there is no sure cure lie cabe the power of a girls first love overcomes all sense of reason and she Is moving in a dream for the time being her father and mother are heartbroken because all their years of love and confidence seem lost she herself will look back aghast at what she is doing in a few years she will look at the joan of today in the same puzzled despair that her parents are feeling now nature against parents but nature is exerting her strong est poisons her strongest witcheries wit cheries at the moment and no one of us is as strong as mother nature every fiber of joans being is crying out for this mans mastery and unless she wakes up in time and she may she is going to break her heart perhaps wreck a childs life caroline brown did what joan is planning to do 17 years ago her letter arrived in the same mail as did that of joans mother this is part of it 1 I ran away with a man of 34 when I 1 was just 18 writes caroline first don rented an unfurnished shack for 7 a month and we went to a chain store and bought two bags of groceries and to the five and dime for plates and pans we had no bed no blankets no mirror or soap or towels I 1 pretended that I 1 thought all this was fun we had less than 11 but his talk was always big and I 1 had believed it four years of poverty we lived in that shack four years and my two daughters were born there I 1 could have gone to the tree ward of the hospital but it was miles away across town and we had no car after my fathers death my mother joined us and paid me 7 a week often it was all I 1 had mother got 40 a month she do more than she did those were years of such suffering as I 1 hope few women in america know never enough to eat every scrap of bacon fat and potato skin saved never enough diapers or blankets or fresh curtains or coal A broken stove propped on blocks broken windows mended with tape four babies strong beautiful babies if had a chance but always with colds and chapped hands and prickly heat and I 1 did it I 1 did it convincing talker don drank gambled quarrelled quarrel led whipped my children but he could put up a story that investigators believed as I 1 had believed it and I 1 got no promise of release or relief in our state you dont get divorces easily 1 I went out to days work leaving ma with the children my employer sent me to secretarial school god bless her four years ago I 1 was made assistant superintendent in the school last month superintendent my oldest girl is a pupil here the second will shortly enter and now don who deserted us eight years ago has come back and wants to be taken back into the family wants to be accepted respected by his son and daughters wants me to support him while he looks up prospect aeu all of the letter that will interest joan but I 1 want her to read it I 1 ask her then to pray for guidance and ask herself seriously why when every other woman who ever took oils path bai failed she thinks she can succeed |