The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-11-17
Country Girl Has
 Hard Time In City
By SOPHIE IRENE LOEB

turned to her home in Pennsyl yania, a much sadder though wise young woman.
 She came in search of fame and for tune and found herself in the clutches of the law, having met with bad com pany and gotten into trouble. The fudge in the case was kind and realized that the girl was more foolish that blameworthy and let her go back whence she came.
 Her sweetheart who had associated with her since schooldays Is waiting with open arms, forgiving all.
 This young person was lucky in that she retrieved herself in time, and life may have much in store for her. Her few short weeks in New York will become only a memory, though sor- rowful one.
 But how about the hundreds of young people who come to the big places and get swallowed up in the rush of things and never have chance to get back. who get so far down in the swamp of distress and destitution that they lose their courage and become the flotsam and jetsam of the seething throng!
 I know a young woman-an only child-the idol of her father and moth CT, also from little town in Pennsyl- vania. This girl had every advantage in the way of schooling She was adored in her environment-the belle of the place. Her friends were legion.
 She was talented and attractive, and could have gone through life in her home town, honored and respected, and worthwhile citizen. But youth longed to spread it's wings before they were strong enough to fly. She defied tine wishes of her parents and came to the metropolis.
 She had depended on the praises of her close friends who told her that she had great talent for the stage Be cause she knew how to recite pieces so well, she had visions of being Bern- hardt or Duse and nothing could stop her in her mad craze to get the world at her feet.
 Little did she realize that the flat teries of friends are worthless when it comes right down to professional advancement. She was too proud to acknowledge defeat and she sank lower and lower before her people realized her situation. They finally wrote me to go and see her, she having written father rosy accounts, evading the truth.
 I found her in a hall bedroom, in the center of a bunch of rags, trying to fix up a costume for vaudeville act, hay ing found a partner-a man who would play it with her.
 In the seemingly short two years that she had been away from her parents, this girl spoke a different language. It seemed incredible. She lived in the lower strata of the stage, and the most sordid things seemed important in get ting into the little vaudeville act.
 She would not listen to the sugges- tion of returning home. She still clung to the possibility that she could rise above everything. What happened?
 She married the vaudeville partner, only to seek the divorce courts a year later. She gave up the stage and be- came a model in a dress house.
 She is in touch with her parents now, who are anxious to straighten ev- erything out for her and give her an other lease on life; but the time she has lost-the misery she has endured can better be imagined than described She has certainly paid for her soar ing ambition. Ambition is vital and important in the young, but it must be tempered with common sense. Most home grown products, when they are up rooted and put in another place, seldom thrive. Some do, but the precentage is so small as to make it serious prob- lem for the average person to consider.
 There is something in the idea that it is better to be a big fish in little pond. Who knows but the happest lives are spent in the smaller places in contentment?
 At any rate, the young person who would rush to the big city had better search deeply and be pretty sure that the talent he wishes to present to the world has in it something bigger than that with which every city is already flooded-every- day talent.