Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-11-03

~ IBBIE was one of those women who
had married early "a flrst-love elope-
ment), had spent the subsequent years
~ bemoaning the fact that she had not
awaited herself of the opportunity for
a college education.
The stage had all been set for Sibbie to at
tend State university when she eloped in
stead. 1t had been no great blow, however. to
her parents. The idea of college, which in
modest way they had been able to afford, had
been to them more of new-fangled notion
than project of value. So when Sibbie
eloped with nice local boy, with prospects
in his fathers machinery shop, it had seemed
more of a blessing than a calamity
In a way this was true because the pretty
Sibbie was to enjoy three years of complete
marital happiness before her husband sue
cunnbed to influenza during an epidemic
It had been hard shedding after that. Her
little girl was just when the father oleo.
Her father-in-laws machine shop was desuneo
to bankruptcy; her own parents had passed on
meanwhile, leaving assets that were chiefly in
the form of mortgages
THERE had not been time after those first
three years of married happiness when
Sibbie had not been haraSSed, pressed and
burdened with the responsibilities of the strug-
gle for existence for herself and little girl.
And through all the driven work-ridden years
the regret that had lain uppermost in the mind
of Sibbie was her failure to avail herself, when
a girl, of the opportunity of college educa-
ton. Lack of it seemed the fundamental ex-
PLANTATION of so many Of the hand1capS that
oppressed her. It was humiliating when she
thought of her little daughter Lottie, that she,
Sibbie, instead of earning their living by some
such activity as teaching or professional work,
should be obliged to accept a salesladyship in
a dry goods store sit behind the wire cage
of a cashiers desk in a lunchroom
college woman happened to run one Of
these lunchrooms in which Sibbie was en-
ployed as cashier. The very books she kept on
her desk were sign Of reproach to the
mother of little Lottie. They were the kind
of books Sibbie was not only unprepared to
read herself, but was unprepared to pass along
and discuss with her daughter. Books of psy-
chology, science, collections of essays.
Because her mind had never been sufficient
1y trained, Sibbie had not the patience for
reading anything except the most superficial
magazines. Vaudeville and motion pictures
were her forms of entertainment, and it was
all she could do to keep awake If she accom-
panied her little daughter, for the sake of its
cultural significance, to a lecture or a SYM
phony concert
And so Sibbie found herself going through
life, branded, as it were, by this outstanding
lack; branded by the fact that as an unedu-
Gated woman she was fettered to walks of life
that otherwise might have been roads to a
higher destiny Try as she would to excuse
herself Sibbie was forced at last to realize
that her intellectual curiosity had simply never
been awakened.
The proprietor of the restaurant was the
sort of college woman whose tastes had been
stimulated back in the formative years. Sibbie
realized that same need within herself. She
had no talent for culture; no appetite, except
one that should have been artihcialIy Stimu-
lated in her youth.
And of COURSE this regret began gradually
to be offset by an ambition. Before Lottie was
in her teens a cleaning resolution had al
ready lit Sibbie's eyes. Lottie would never
know the bitter pangs of regret that had eaten
their way through the life Of her mother.