The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-02-17
By DOROTHY DIX

1 have received communication from a branch of the New England Bachelor and Spinster club, in which l am asked these questions:
 "shsJ id old maids and old bache lors, who are 40 or 50, or thereabouts, stay in single blessedness, or should they try to find suitable mates?
 What qualities should they look for in the men and women they marry?
 "Is natrimony likely to bring them happiness, or are they too set in their ways to be able to adapt them selves to domestic life with it's give and take?'
 Since you ask my advice, say, go to it, friends. Better late than never! There are 10 times as many good reasons why the middle-aged should marry as there are why the young should marry, and they have 10 times more chance to be happy, though married than the young have. Sta tstics show that it is the boy and girl romances that oftenest end in divorce, but the unions entered into by mature people last.
 It is well for old maids affd old bachelors to marry because as we grow old we grow lonely, and we AAVOO " SEOW weary of the gayety of youth. We get tired of chasing about from jazz to jazz. We no longer enjoy the hale-fellow- well-mct chance acquaintance.
 We want our own homes with their quiet pleasure. We want a fireside companion. We want somebody whose interests are our interests, somebody to whom we can say don't you re- l., Il when we talk about ourselves, some body who is even interested in hear ing about our rheumatism and who fusses over us when we catch a bad cold.
 only 8 husband or a wife can sup ply this heart hunger for beloved cemrade to sit across the drop light from one of an evening, and to oc- company one along the last lap of the journey of life. So thrice wise are the old maids and old bachelors who realize that they are listening to the last call to the dining car, and who, while there is yet time, provide against the lean and lonely years of old age by marriage.
 As for the qualities that the old maid and old bachelor should look for in their mates, that is, of course, a matter of individual taste, but the thing that makes their marriage preferred matrimonial risk is that by the time one is 40 one knows what one wants in husband or wife, and marriage is not like buying pig in a poke as it is with the young.
 Also, at 10, men and women are what they are going to be, and so those who marry them know exactly what they are getting, and what they have to expect, and this takes the risk out of the greatest gamble on earth and makes it 3. sure thing.
 Therefore, almost the only thing that either party has to consider Is whether the party of the other part is congenial and sympathetic or not. Instead of murmuring, he loves me, he loves me not as sweet-and- twenty does, as it plucks the petals of it's daisies. wise-and- forty repeats, "he loves me, he bores me not" And he or she abides by the issue.
 The marriages of the mature are nearly always happy. not only be- cause they know what they want in : 6 husband ersawife but because they do not expect the impossible. A man who cfigyes fntelleetuais c9nversation does not marry bobbed-haired flap per, expecting her to be able to dis course about the theory of relativity. He wels college graduate with whom he is in the habit of holding high brow discourse. The man who lives to eat samples a woman's angel food and salad dressing before he leads ner to the altar instead of marrying an opera singer and then lambasting her because she isn't cook.
 The woman whose soul is set on Paris finery picks out her limousine and then finds man who can pay for it, instead of running the life of some poor clerk by whining because she cannot have the things that rich wom- en have. and she who yearns for the higher life goes on still hunt for a soul mate before, instead of after, marriage.
 Of coarse. the old bachelor and the old maid inevitably acquire ways" and form little habits that are hard to break, but it is one of the com