The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-08-09
HIGH SPIRITED WOMAN FLEES
 SMALL TOWN LIFE IN WEST
 FOR MAIN STREET," MANHAT TAN

New York. Aug. e-High-spirited women and hick towns arc incompat- | ible.
 Mary MacLane, of Montana, said so many years ago.
 Carol Kennicott, heroine of Main Street." had an awful time in Gopher Prairie, both with the town and the Mrs. Clark Durea, minister's wife. of Monticello, N. Y, ran away with | another man because, as she said, she couldn't stand life in a small town
 Now here's Mrs. Frances Haskell Nib1acl1. who prefers divorce to life | in Oklahoma
 The beautiful and clever daughter | of the first Governor of Oklahoma, Charles N Haskell, could not go back to the husband whose voice called to her from the vast steppeS of that re- zion remote from New York State. Mrs. Niblack, in 1908, married Les | lie G. Niblack, army officer. Not till 1917 did she come to look upon the splendor that is conceded to be New York City.
 Right then and there something the great golden west. No more si- los, overalls or oil wells for her. Wanted No More Oklahoma. The year 1917, which marked the advent of Mrs. Niblack in Gotham, also is memorable as the initial date of the great conflict The prairie COSS were SACnanB6o 1OT lie tugs oA war. Mrs NibIack became a nurse and went overseas. as did her hus- band then become major.
 War ended. the army officer ex- town His wife compared it with New York to the serious detrinent of the Oklahoma municipality. She asked divorce; grounds cruelty; sne lost her case, but her husband won freedom. charging desertion Thus does lovely woman spurn un- suitable background for her talents and charm.
 Mary MacIane first started to fer ment way out in Butte, Mont AL | first the startled natives didn't kno" what her unusual talent for sen was madness, a few though genius | The few were right. | The militant Mary's whole problem was contained in her address, as one | of her friends suggested After ''The Story of Mary MacLane" had e4citeo wild comment, much of it unfavoranie. | If there was anything the matter with Mary, Butte, Mont, was lo | blame. so her friends said. Mary was | the pioneer enemy of monotonous ire However. this weird genius IS al, ways well able to express bitingly ana l picturesque-if often t1resomely- | her reactions to life, place and CIT | cumstance. For instance:
 | Mary's Morass of Monotony. l "I and all other seamstresses ana monotonous clerks and lawyers ana l bonsewives sit upright in chairs and | talk into teIephones and walk fast and eat breakfast and brush halr; all | the while marooned in morasS or small, wild, unexciteing, tasteless pain"
 | Naturally, Mary was none to care. full to hide her dislike of Butte ana | its people, and just as naturally those | spurned ones showed thelr oiSiiho' of them.
 | q meet people on the street whom I know, whom may speak to- "holli I may avoid, who may speak 1o me; who may avoid me, for l am pest well hated in this Butte o l words were used to character1ze ner gIad-to-be-m e-misunderstood young wom-
 In another sentence she speaks of being as free as a wildcat on a twl light hill" ,o-- CTS were always women, and she un. derstood very well the problems or her own sex in the small town.
 Ordinary Housewife'S Life. ger want to show" explained the weird literary genius, Wnae se 2 plain, everyday, ordinary mouse" , ie endures I want to show her shut up in her home with only dull gossip of her neighbors. I want to show her as she is unable to leave the 1our walls of her dwelling. because or ner household duties s.Imagine the temptations Of woman of that sort, imagine them when she does go out into the worIo The husband does not appreclale this. but the wife does. No wonoer the divorce courts are kept busy.
 The reactions of the author herseH
 were much the same, for she oe-
 scribes her own life thus:
 .'I rise in the morning, .eat tnIet
 meals, and walk, and work ilttIei
 read a. little, write, see some unlnter
 esting people; go to bed.
 Truly an exalted, soulful hfe!
 But there came a time, after some some
 vears-Mary had left Butte to VlsI
 Chicago, New York and Boston-Whe1
 the Montana genius wanted 10 et
 home to see her people. The grass
 blades of the meadows call me-, she
 said.
 No Better Second Time.
 Note meadows" for such they ap
 peared when she was far away. Opor
 her arrival home she writes:
 'sI was curious to test my ampres
 sions of Butte after seven years ao
 sence. I hoped I might find It more
 endurable. But, pah! it was the same
 hideous home of drudging devils ant scared scenery that it always was I <oxzrza I missed and 1OnEed flor