The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-06-13
Dorothy Die Says
BY DOROTHY DIX
Worlds Highest Paid Woman Writer

1
drama that is either tragedy or corn
edy, according to your point of view.
| They who went forth to college last
fall plain Bobby Jones and Sallie
Smith, have returned to the bosom OF
their families Mister Robert AlgernCn
Jones and Miss sara Smith, and their
bewildered parents are realizing, with
amazement and despair. that of all
| strange people under the sun there is
none with whom they are SO little a.
queinted with their own children.
Bobby Jones, who went away, was
such nice. jolly, enthusiastic lad,
/ and he was SO proud of his parents
and his home and his town. The
! Robert Algernon Jones, who has come
1 back, is a blase creature who has dis
covered that the world is stuffed with
sawdust, and is generally cinders,
body and everything, from the Deity
down. He calls his home town a hole
not fit for a dog to live in, and does
not conceal the fact that he considers
his father and mother supera nnua ted
provincials whose opinions are only TO
be accepted with pitying liberation by
one who has been privileged to have
wider outlook on life.
by George, can you beat it?'' says
Father surveying Bob-Robert over
the rims of his glasses. Il have al
ways regretted that did not have the
advantage of good education When
1 was young, but if this is what col
| lege does to a boy, 1 thank Coo tnat
the only education I ever had got In
the University of Hard Knocks, which,
at least, beats some common sense into
the thickeSt head.
And then Father gives contempt
flamboyant hat and tie, his dinky lit
tie stick, and the two sit up in en-
barrassed silence when left alone to-
gether because they have not got
enough points of mental contact TO
even start a conversation.
| And mother looks at Sal-Sara ex-
actIv as the old hen who Matched out
a swan must have looked at ner
| Hedging. The Sallie mother knew
was sweet, simple, clinging little glri
who flushed to the roots or her halr
If YOU spoke to her suddenly.
| This strange Sara is an aggressive
voung woman with radical opinions
about life and expressing ones own
individuality and ones DUTY TO one
inner self, and so en-, and she discusses
with perfect frankness, in mixed COM
Dany. subjects that mother has never
mentioned except in a whisper TO her
family physician.
TO raise everyone up to the higher
| level she believes she has attained
and she has scarcely bestowed a KISS
| of greeting upon her parents pelore
she begins trying her prentice hano
on reforming all of the pleasant, com
| forta BILE homely ways in which they
have logged along for thirty years No
more sitting around in slippered ease
in the evening for father NO more
| doughnuts for breakfast, even IL
mother is famous for making them:
Daughter is home from school ana
| she is putting in her vacation doing
/ missionary work on her long suffering
I family.
1 ~ declare" says mother with a tired
sight, don't know what to make or
SaI-Sara, she's SO changed. l used TO
think what pleasure and comfort L
would take in her society when she
got grown. but now she corrects my
pronunciation and my grammar until
1 am afraid to open my mouth to
speak, and as for having any real talk
with her, why I'd know lot more
what to say to the queen of England
than 1 do to my own daughter
OF course it is easy enough for
those of US on the outside to smile at
the superciliousness of youth, drunk
on its first draught of the heady wine
of cuiturine. We may even assure
Bobby's and Sallie's distraught father
and mother that the symptoms that
seem so alarming to them really mean
nothing. They are just as inevitably a
concomitant of a college course as the
measles are of childhood. Bobby and
Sallie will get over being superior and
feeling that they are oracles, and will
come back to normal and be glad
enough to take fathers advice and ask
mother what to do when the baby has
collie.
In the meantime the significant
phase of the situation is that the boy
and girl have changed. In the few
brief months they have been away
from home they have suddenly and
mysteriously crossed over that invis-
ible line that divides childhood from
man and womanhood. In all good
truth they are no longer Bobby and
Sallie. They are Robert and Sara.
Nature has sent out her invitation
to their parents to meet Mr.. Jones and
Miss Smith and few fathers and
are good enough sports-to accept
the invitation cordially and full
heartedly.
They do not want to be forced to
face the fact that their babies are ba-
bies no long err to be ruled and dictat-
women with rights and privileges, and
individual lives of their own that they
must live in their own way.
There is no other gift that parents
bestow SO grudgingly as their recogni-
ton of their children being grown up.
and it is because of this niggardly
Withholding from youth of the tribute
to it's new found dignity that many of
the arrangements between parents
| and children arise.
Fathers and mothers are always
complaining that their children do not
, confide in them. IT am good pals
! with the young fellows in my office, y
, a man will say, but 1 haven't the
, slightest idea what my own son thinks
on any subject. He is as dumb as a
: clam in my presence"
My daughter never tells me any
thing" a mother will moan. "She is
more intimate with half a dozen other
3 women than she is with her own
3 mother"
The reason is that other people ac-
cept the boy and girl as grown-ups
listen to them respectfully, accord
I