The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1943-04-29
By KATHLEEN NORRIS
Bell syndicate-wNu Features.


is a familiar old
saying to the effect that
l. when you call the tune
you have to pay the piper. One
reason why older women, moth
ers and teachers and guardians
of girls, are so extraordinarily
fussy about what girls do and
don't do, is because the years
between 16 and 26 are the years
when most of us call the tune.
Because she is young and
confident and spoiled, full of
half-formed yet very ambi-
tious dreams for the years to
come, a girl will quite readily
call the tune. She's going to marry
Paul and reform him, and they will
inherit all his uncle's money and
live in the smartest of Park Ave
'nue's apartments. That's the tune.
When Paul doesn't reform, and
the uncle's wealth turns out to have
been a handsome annuity that end
ed with his life, and when the smart
apartment turns out to be forty
dollar fiat in the Bronx, that's when
the piper calls for his pay.
Small children can't make impor-
tant decisions. People in the thir-
kinc ay1 foyfinc rrctYn1lxy bod
some experience, and occasionally
have some sense. Old people have
called all the tunes, and paid-and
double paid-the importunate piper,
and their deciding times are over.
So the dangerous time is in the late
teens and the early twenties, and
we older women watch our girls
fearfully and sorrowfully at that
time, hoping that whatever we have
been able to give them of code, of
sense of duty, of wisdom and I'M
Outstanding, will guide them safely
through.
Girls Better Prepared.
For it is a terrible truth that most
of our young men are completely
unprepared to make good husbands.
Girls have a better chance for. sew
eral reasons. One is that many
girls know something of housekeep-
ing, managing, wifely obligation just
from watching mother. Another is
that the success of marriage de-
ponds much more upon the wife's
disposition than upon that of the
husband.
Boys have no such training. The
average mother shrinks from the
thought that any other mere woman
is going to win her son away from
her. She'll not anticipate this ca
lamity by helping him see what is
fine and trustworthy in any girl, and
what is not. They're all vampires
trying to capture her Robert, and
she'll not help them! So she is very
apt to misrepresent them to him,
criticize them, warn him that al
though Ann is a very fine girl, she's
going to get fat like her mother,
and although Susan seems a per-
fectly delightful creature, there is
that uncle of hers who misappropri-
ated funds ten years ago.
So Robert goes afield to find his
sweetheart, and the result is a part
of our tragic national story of di-
vorces.
Here is the case of an Oshkosh
woman; a case that is typical of
many, and full of bewilderment and
suffering. Mary Bates is rs, capa-
BILE office worker, with a small girl
of four. A small girl of four, as
some of us know, can be a rather
bewitching person, and the picture
Mary Lee sends me of Janey-Jo
could go on any magazine cover
with general approval.
"When Janey-Jo was IL months
old I left her father" writes Mary.
''The reasons were complete incom-
patibility, boredom, continual draw
ing apart; it was marriage that
never should have taken place, as
my own father and mother and all
my friends knew well. But I was
10, Sidney 20, we were both infatu-
y n