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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Tliat Too Laic FccJing Bell Syndicate. WNU Fentures. "Older persons try to advise hot-headed youth; it is the tragedy of all the generations that hot-headed youth never will listen." By KATHLEEN NORRIS "TFA GIRL could only see I things now as she'll surely surely surely see them a few years from now! wails Rosamond's mother. "The man admits to 47; Rosamond is almost 18. She says she will be married on her birthday. He has been married before; he has sons older than she is; he must depend de-pend on her small fortune, for he has none of his own, and no job, and yet she is completely infatuated with him, and nothing noth-ing her grandmother and I can say is of any use." Well, poor Rosamond must be left to her fate, If she feels like that, and allowed to ruin her life In her own way. We parents can't save our children from their follies. If love and advice and example have no effect, then sometimes they have to be allowed to go over the whirlpool and swim to shore afterward after-ward as best they may. But I'd like to know more of Rosamond's Rosa-mond's background, and satisfy my suspicion that something was lacking lack-ing in her training, that she can be so utterly beyond influence and control now. Where did her mother fail her? Somewhere, you may be very sure. As for seeing things In youth as we see them a few years later how different this world would be if we could I How many miserable young mistakes would be avoided, how much we could save ourselves! Older persons try to advise hot- headed youth; it is the tragedy of all the generations In turn that hotheaded hot-headed youth never will listen. Now Wants Baby Back. Marie Louise, a college girl In our town, went on certain free-and-easy house-parties a few years ago and did "what all the others did." In other words she entered into a loVe-afTair with a man she hardly hard-ly knew and didn't care about particularly. par-ticularly. The result was a heartbroken heart-broken family in Minnesota, to which she returned in disgrace, and a small baby's concealed arrival and hasty disposition for adoption. The girl married, discovered that she could not have more children, and went to the town where her child lived. She saw a small, fairylike fairy-like little girl with a wistful, searching search-ing little face. The neighbors said that her foster-parents weren't too kind to her. And the mother was helplessl She came back home, as she had come in the beginning, to reproach me for having advised adoption. And yet adoption, in these cases, certainly gives a baby a better chance than to be raised by an unmarried mother and marked with the still inescapable stigma of illegitimacy. This was the girl who told me that irregular sex relations In her school days didn't concern anyone but herself! Then there is Betty, another childless young mother, who had a silly quarrel with her brother, when they were young. Just a few hot words about the girl he loved, and eventually married, and there was a barrier between them forever. Pride on neither side would break down, and can't break down, even now. when they need each other so. For Jim has been widowed, and has two small girls to raise, and Betty lost her husband In the war, and is hungry for maternal cares. Just a phrase of apology and regret would have ended this, 10 years ago; brother and Bister don't know each other now. But Marie Louisa and Betty aren't the only ones. Which one of us doesn't look back at some foolishness, fool-ishness, some indiscretion, some mistake of youth with bitter regret! Just to have been ordinarily polite to mother, as she worried and pleaded. plead-ed. Just to have gone back that evening, eve-ning, and surprised dad by spending spend-ing an hour beside his sick-bed, reading to him. Just not to have written that angry letter. Just not to have cultivated that dangerous friendship, against everyone's advice. ad-vice. Just to have forgiven and forgotten for-gotten the unintentional slight, or the accidentally overheard criticism. crit-icism. To have made less of the tangible thing Grandma's opal breast-pin or Aunt Lizzie's Canton set and more of the spirit of giving giv-ing and sharing. It is a strange heart indeed that does not remember scores of these omissions and stupidities, some of them seemingly slight, some of them affecting our whole lives. But what we must also remember, remem-ber, in hours of compunction and remorse, is that all about us are other opportunities for kindness and thoughtfulness, chances to save our-selves our-selves fresh reason for regret in the years to come. Sometimes I fancy that generosity today actually actual-ly wipes out those old mistakes, and that to have learned the lesson is more important than the painful way in which we had to learn it. To say "I was wrong, and that that is past I start from here to go right," is to have mastered a very important impor-tant mystical secret. There is no blunder, stupidity, sin of youth that may not be wiped out and forgotten; forgot-ten; and, if we will have it so, may not be turned from loss into gain. "She returned in disgrace. |