The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-01-19

DeaT MISS DlX-l am DacneiOr oC years old. I have a woman friend of 26 with whom I have gone around for several years and whom I have re- garded as good pal and chum, and nothing else. Three weeks ago this girls parents moved to distant state. The evening before they left I took the girl to dinner, and got the surprise of my life when she told me that she did not want to go away and leave me and that if l told her to stay she would be glad to do so, because she loved me above everything else.
 told her I didn't care for her in that way and that she had better go on with her parents. But ever since she went away she has written me daily letters telling me how heart broken she is without me and begging me to let her come to me.
 Here is my problem: Shall marry her, make her happy and make myself miserable, or shall I tell her that I her, and thus bread her heart!
 GEORGE.
 Answer-when women take the ini- tiative in .love-making and pop the question, they have to take the risk of getting the mitten, just as a man does when he goes accounting. And men have to learn how to spunk up and say No" to the women they don't love and don't want, just as women turn down proposition from man for whom they do not care.
 You are in great danger, George, of wrecking your whole life, because you are so flattered at having a woman make love to you and propose to you that you are about to lose your head and do the most crininaly foolish thing that man can possibly do. And that is to marry a woman whom he doesn't love because she loves him.
 Lots of men do it. Lots of men have married women that they knew at the time were not suitable wives for theni-women who didn't belong to their strata of society, women who bored them, women they knew to be brainless little fools. But the women clung to them and cried at the thought of being parted from them, and the poor. befuddled men didn't have the backbone to break away from the clutching hands and flee from the tears and save themselves.
 Don't be this sort of weak, senti- mental fool, George. Just realize this: that if you don't love woman before you marry her, you will come to hate her after you are tied to her, because every woman puts her best foot foremost before the wedding. If she doesn't charm you when she has got on her company clothes and her company manners, she will be actually repulsive to you when you see her in wrappers and curl papers, and when you have to put up with her nerves and her temper.
 It takes a lot of love to enable any body, and especially man, to stand matrimony.
 And don't think that you will make the woman happy by marrying her when you don't love her. A shang- haied husband is poor substitute for volunteer one. You will always re- sent her~ having got the better of you. You will always feel her burden, and you will let her know it. Besides, the chances are that some day you will meet the One Woman and fall in love with her.
 Say No" to the girl and stick to it, and don't worry about her dying of a broken heart They never do.
 DOROTHY DIX.
 Dear Miss Dix: I am a woman of 3S and live in the country, but I find it very lonely, as my husband is out at work all day. I have no children, and will never have any. I am very anxious to adopt one, but my husband will not consent to it.
 It would be a great comfort for me to have little one to love and to take care of. Will wou give me your ideas about adopting baby?
 MRS. c. L.
 Answer: I think, Mrs. c. L., that the finest thing anybody can do is to take little homeless, orphaned child and to bring it up so that it will never know that it is motherless and fatherless. Also, think that it is the best-paying investment that any body can make.
 When we get middle-aged we begin to lose interest in ourselves. We know pretty much what we are going to be and have. Fate has dealt our Nor is there very much more that we want for ourselves.
 Then is when the blessing of children comes in. They bring new life and gayety into the house. They bring fresh interests. They bring hope and ambition, so that people literally live their lives over again in their children, and they can look forward to their children doing all the things they would have liked to do and couldn't dos
 If you haven't any child of your own, &psIzWxzzElzzSzs > g s. n