The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-05-10


 and his mother says it will kill her if he leaves her. My husband has sssssss.s:sss -. talent, and I feel s-;-----.' sure that he could succeed if he would break away from his parents and try to stand on his own feet, but he listens to his mother instead of me, and l do not know what to do.
 A TROUBLED WIFE. Answer:
 Force your husband into accept ing the good situation if you can. What he needs is to have his moth er's apron strings cut, and to be thrown out on his own. In that way only can he ever attain his stature as a man. As long as he stays at home he will be a per petual minor mothers fair-haired darling boy, but boy who is under authority, and who has no chance to use his own judgment. ' It is very sweet and lovable for a man to be so devoted to his mother that he is willing to forego the prospect of success to stay with her, but it shows weak streak in him. The men who do worthwhile things in the world are not those who cling to their mothers petticoats, and who stay at home sweet ening mothers tea for her, and cater ing to an old woman's whims. They are the men who have the grit to gird up their loins and go after fortune wherever it beckons.
 Moreover, when man is married he is husband first and son sec ond. and his duty is to his wife instead of to his mother. It is her future and the future of their chil-
 dren that he has to consider as well as his own, and he has no right to sacrifice them to his mother.
 She is selfish mother, anyway, who would clip her children's wings and keep them in the home nest, half starved and poorly feathered, when abroad they could find plenty of nice fat worms for the scratching and gay plumage Real mother love stiles its own bangs, at the separation, and sends her sons and daughters forth with cheer and encouragement to make the best they can of their lives.
 Of course, the overfond mother will be lonely if her son goes, but she will not die of broken heart. Millions of other sons leave home to pursue their careers, and there are no undue fatalities among mothers. And your husband can comfort yourself with this reflec- tion that the very mother who tries to keep him away from this oppor- tunity will be ashamed of him if he stays at home and is failure. And she will never be done boasting of him if he goes away and makes a success.
 So, Worried Wife, buck your husband up into cutting away from the home ties that hinder him, and push him through the door that opportunity is opening to him. DOROTHY DIX. Dear Miss Dix: I am twenty-nine years old and for the last three years have been going out with a young man one year my senior. He tells me that he likes me, but he impresses upon me the fact that we are not engaged, and he tells other people that he never in. tends to marry me and that when he settles down he is going to marry girl about eighteen. If am too old for him to marry, don't you think, am too old to have him waste my time?
 TROUBLED. Answer:
 certainly do, my dear. Xvi dently the gentleman is one of the selfish sort who thinks that a girl has no rights that man has to consider, and that it is his privi- lege to amuse himself at her ex- pense. He monopolizes your time. He keeps other men away from you. He fills your heart so full of love for him that there will never be a place in it for mother man, and then he plans tG cave you in the lurch when he has grown tired of you,
 It is foxy little scheme for enjoying himself at your expense, but you will deserve to be a sour old maid and the laughing stock of fappers if you let him get away
 Mothers Il