Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-08-04
DOROTHY DIX DISCUSSES LIFE
TALKS ON HEART AND HOME

make an interest for herself. She
has got something into which she
cam pour her energy and enthu
s:|sm and get back results. She is
sitting in at the biggest game i'll the
| world.
For these and a thousand other
reasons every girl, whether rich or
poor. should fit herself for some
gainful occupation as a part of her
! education, and she should begin now
while she still has the study habit,
and while she is young and plastic.
Let her begin by trying to find out
! for what she is best fitted. Only a
very few people have some talent
so marked that nature settled the
question for them before they were
born.
Most Of US have no especial gift,
but there is always some one thing
that one likes to do better than any
thing else, and that points the road
that it is best to follow. For the
only things we ever succeed in are
the things we like to do.
If you like to cook or sew, take
up the study of domestic science, or
dress-making or millinery. If you
are fond of little children and still
like to make paper dolls, study kim
dergartening. If you liked to write
compositions at school take secre-
tarial course and qualify for being
somebody's highly paid secretary. II
your best marks at school were in
mathematics, fit yourself for a. book
keeper. If you are more clever with
your hands than with your head, the
whole range of handicrafts is open
to you. If~you have personality,
"sell yourself" as the phrase goes,
to some big store. /
Study yourself, and then develop
your talent, whatever it is, to the
highest point. 1t doesn't make a
bit of difference what you do. It's
how you do it that counts. You
can make a success in any line, if
you are willing to put enough heart
and back into it.
In choosing your life work don't
make the mistake that most girls
do Of picking out something that
they consider high -faluting. / get
thousands of letters from girls on
this subject. Seventy-five per cent
of them want to be moving-picture
actresses, and the other twenty-five
on the stage and be writer's and
grand-opera singers. I've never had
q letter from a girl who said she
aspired to be good cook or a crack
erjack stenogra pher.
Yet it is the common, practical,
everyday thing for which there is
a constant demand. More girls have
starved in the movies than ever
made fortunes in them, and there
are thousands upon thousands of
failures to every success in literature
or on the stage. For God has to
make you a writer or a singer or an
actress, but you can make yourself
g. successful bookkeeper or sales.
woman.
Furthermore, we can do without
the arts if we have to, but we've all
got to eat and be clothed. There
fore, in picking out your profession,
choose something for which your
fellow-creatures have daily need.
Then thoroughly prepare yourself
for 1t, for it is only expert work for
which the world will pay. A Door
cook gets $40 a week; a chef 800. A
bungling seamstress gets S. for max
ing dress; an artist of the Rue de
la Paix gets $500. You will have to
work just as hard to make a little
money as you will to make much.
The best thing that modern life
has given women is the chance to
make their own living, and be in
dependent. Go to it, girls
Copyright, 1923.