Evening star., 1936-03-17

eartnly Boo0S, tnere are many women
who are celibate by nature and who
wouldn't have husband at any price.
They prefer to espouse a career rather
than man. They were old maids IN
their cradles, and to them o man
around the house is just a nuisance
who cutters up the premises and drops
cigarette ashes on the floor.
Other women are old maids because
Of some blighted love affair Of their
youth. Perhaps their sweethearts died.
Perhaps they were Just philanderers
who kissed and rode away. But having
lavished all the treasures OF their
hearts on one man, they had nothing
to give another. Having known a great
love they would not decline upon
lesser one and so they remain single.
FREQUENTLY girl who longs for
her own man and child and home
does not marry because Mr.. Right
never comes along. Sometimes she is
superior, of finer clay, better educated
and more cultured than the men In
her community and she neither at
tracts them nor do they attract her.
Sometimes she is sidetracked in an
Adamless Eden whose only male In
habitants are callow schoolboys anu
senile grandpas. Sometimes it tust
chances that she never meets her mate
and she prefers to go her way alone
rather than with an uncongeniaI
companion.
Then, of course, there is the girl who
drifts into old maidenhood because
she is too choosey. This is particularly
apt to happen to the local Miss Amer
lea. She thinks her looks rate her a
husband who would be composite Of
Henry Ford and Clark Gable and a
high-browed college professor, 50 she
turns up her nose at the honest
grocery clerk and the up-and-coming
young insurance agent who would like
to marry her. And by the time she
discovers that no fairy prince is auto
mobiling down her street the men she
might have had have married some
body else and she is left lamenting.
Many women can blame their being
Spinsters on their mothers. Sometimes
mother Is an awful warning who
scares men OF. Maybe she IS virago,
and no man Is willing to risk
mother with a serpent'S tongue
coming to live with him. Sometimes
| she is lazy and sloppy and a slovenly
housekeeper, and men are afraid that
1t may be case of like mother, like
daughter. Maybe mother gives boys
such frosty welcome when they come
that they get cold feet and never
come back. Maybe she fills the house
with so many taboos about smoking
and dancing and turning on the radio
| after II O'Clock that they just pass up
the girl for some other girl whose
mother makes courting easier.
THE demon chaperon mother is also
first aid to making her daughters
old maids. She Is determined that her
girls shall not be like the free-and-
easy harum-scarum young things that
she sees all about her. She is going to
keep her darlings unspotted from the
world.
So she won't let them do the things
the other young people are doing, ur
60 to the places they 60. Papa has to
i take them to parties and they have TO
come home at midnight, and mamma
sits in earshot when they have callers.
And the result is they are dropped
from the crowd and have to 60 with
| mammas friends instead of boys and
girls Of their own age, and they are
Just as much quarantined against hav-
ing beaux and getting married as If
they had the smallpox.
Too strict mothers and possessive
mothers are the answer TO why thou
sands Of old maids are old maids.
Maybe old maids wouldn't I've any hap
pier If they were married, but a lot
Of men would be better of If they had
got the good wives they missed.
DOROTHY DIX.
Copyright. 1860