The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-09-21
Say It With
 Work

A young girl writes to me that she is very much in love with a man whom her parents refuse to let her marry because he cannot support her. She says that he is good-looking, and well educatd, and moral, and that there is nothing the matter with him, except that he has no way of making a living. She considers that her par ents are very foolish to object to that, and she wants to know what think about 1t.
 I think the parents are dead right, and that nothing more disqualifies man for matrimony than not hay ing good steady job, that pulls down pay check commensurate with the way in which he and the girl he marries have been accus- toned to live.
 Matrimony Is matter of money as well IS of sentiment, and the struc- ture of domestic happiness that Is rot built on good, sound, solid sub stantial foundation very soon comes topping down about the ears of those who have thought that they could live in a fools paradise.
 It is, perhaps, natural for silly young girl, whose wants have all ways been provided for by her par ents, to believe that love and TO- nance are the only things that count in the world, and that she could live on bread and cheese and kisses. She is convinced that her beloved Angus tus will be all-in-all to her, and that when she is married to him she will be lifted above the material things of earth, and have no care about what she eats, or where she lives, or about such mundane things as clothes.
 Unfortunately, loves young dream is as substantial a diet as moon beams, and those who attempt to live upon 1t soon find that they have an aching void that cries aloud for beef steak and onions and corn beef and cabbage, and when these are not forthcoming, romance goes into the discard. For 1t Is sad but true that our bodies must be fed and comfort able before We even inquire how 1t is with our souls.
 Angeline won't believe me, but it is the honest goodness truth I am telling her when I assure her that, if she marries a man who can't sup port her, in less than six months she won't be asking him If he worships her with his whole heart and if he Is sure that he will never love her less than he does now. She will be wanting to know why he can't get something to do and make a decent living for her.
 This isn't because Angelina has grown sordid and mercenary It is because life goes on after marriage just as it did before marriage. You grow just as hungry after marriage, and desire three square meals day as ardently asNyou did before mar ri Vnt f0- I.I- 1I,,, to live, in the same old way, and you find that you have just the same desire for good clothes and amuse- ments after you enter the holy es- tate as you did before you en- tered 1t.
 The woman who marries man who can't support her is foredoomed to lose out because she soon finds her romance in tatters and .her affec- tion dead. For no woman can love a man she does not respect and no woman can respect a man who is too lazy and,-shiftless to make living for his family.
 woman can forgive a man any other crime on earth easier than she can just being no account, lacking the energM the grit and the determina- tion to get on in the world, and when she realizes that she Is tied for life to this kind of'a man. she is filled with a whitening contempt of him that burns up the last shred of sen timent she has in her heart for him. No wife is so miserable as she who is ashamed of her husband because he cannot hold his own among other men,.
 Angelina thinks her parents cruel because they are not willing for her to marry man who cannot make living. Let her reflect that if a man cannot support his family some one else must take on his job. Does Angelina feel that 1t is fair and just to ask her old father to undertake to feed and clothe a worthless son. in-law and his progeny?
 Believe me, the woman who has
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