The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-16
It Is Happier, Wiser For
 Older Persons to "Carry On''

their own personal appearance They grow dull and uninteresting, and in time their husbands and children come to regard them as merely the servants they have made of them | selves.
 You will find plenty of families in which a woman will interrupt a loverlike speech from her husband to tell him that the coal is out, and the butcher bill is outrageous this month. Many mother will silence the confidence that shy child was about to make to her by telling it to take it's hand off the table, and for goodness sake not to track so much mud on the floor. Such women. in trying to make their families com fortable, forget that wife and mother should also be spiritual help to her family. They have lost their sense of values.
 There are other women who are not robust. They have little strength, and when they exhaust this on house. hold tasks it leaves them with tangled nerves, cross. fretful. impa- tient. moody. Respondent.
 Half of the homes that husbands and children regard as places of tor ment are made that way by women who had no sense of values, and who thought 1t was more important to have doilies on the dinner table, and elaborate meals than it was to be placid and pleasant, and jolly and agreeable. They could have saved themselves the fatigue that is the mother of irritability by having few CT dewdabs about the house and plainer food and so kept themselves sane and sweet, but they thought it more important to keep their pantry shelves orderly than to keep their bodies in order.
 Yet there isn't man or child on earth who wouldn't rather have corned beef and cabbage with a jolly woman at the head of the table than a ten-course banquet served by a nagging. fretful. overworked. over wrought wife and mother who Is all ways on the verge of hysteria.
 There are other women who con- slider that they do their highest duty to their children when they sacrifice their whole lives to them. Mother goes shabby that the children may have indulgences that rich children have. Mother sits up till all hours tHdt MdWlo may nave dS fHuCu Hduu embroidery on her dress as the other girls have. Mother never goes any where. She never reads anything She is working too hard for her chill dren.
 She hasn't any time for anything else. She hasn't any time to make home interesting, so her children find their amusement on the streets. She doesn't know the people they know, so she has no chance to guide them in the selection of their friends. She has no time to get acquainted with them or to play with them, so they never confide in her.
 False values again. It doesn't make particle of difference whether Mamie had five tucks or thousand tucks in her petticoat. but it makes lot of difference that Mamie doesn't know mother we'll enough to tell her that she is meeting boys on the street corner instead of having them come to see her at home.
 It doesn't make any difference whether Johnny always has dough- nuts for breakfost or not but it makes all the difference in the world whether Johnny's mother is chum- ming with him, and helping him safe ly across the dangerous bridge that crosses the chasm between boyhood and manhood. and whether Johnny's mother is inspiring him to make something of himself. and insulting ih him the grit that will make him set his teeth and carry on when the hard sledding of life comes.
 After all life is a series of com promises. Always we have to choose between two things. and nothing is more important than that we should assess things at their real value.
 DOROTHY DIX.