Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1943-02-12
By KATHLEEN NORRIS
Bell Syndicate-WNU Features

A MOTHERLESS girl of 10
~ writes me that she is 60
4 ing to wed her soldier in
early March, and wants to
know what "all the pitfalls of
marriage are, and how to avoid
them, and how to get along with
out the GOODNESS, criticism, nag
ging, boredness that so often
impresses outsiders as being
characteristic of married life.
1T scares me-" writes
Marie-Therese, 'to see the
establishment that so many
of my older friends have expert
enced. I don't mean actual ugliness
and divorce. But 1 mean when the
man wants to go to parties and the
wife hates them, or he is late for
meals, or she is a bad cook, or ex-
travagant, and they keep alluding to
each others faults. You'd never
get Nancy to do that!' the man says,
and the wife says, You know that
when it's a question between me and
his mother, l haven't chance'
Jack is an instructor at an air.
base" the letter goes on, 80 we
may be settled for quite while.
We have already rented a nice little
house in a pretty old town; have
two girl friends in the same place.
So it ought all to be perfectly ideal,
and l want to do my part to keep
it so. But having been brought up
in the households of married cousins
and aunts I know how the glamour
can fade, and l dread even momen-
tary GOODNESS or misunderstanding"
Some Live Happily.
Your attitude, Marie-Therese, is
very lovely one, and speaks for
a fine and gentle nature, and that
nature will tell you more clearly
than could any words of mine how
you can cherish and cultivate the
peace and love that are part of mar
ried life. There are wives and hus-
bands who live without undignified
squabbling and sulking. And even
when they do squabble and sulk &C.
casionally, by some miracle that is
marriage it is often not as serious
as it sounds. 1t is nerves, fatigue,
misunderstanding; it is outbursts of
verbal fireworks that mean very
little, and that sometimes clear the
air.
So that when husband comes
home at night to find out that his
suit hasn't come back from the
tailor's, that dinner is heated-up stew
and mashed turnip, that his coffee
ration is one half-cup, and that
Nancy has promised to spend Sum-
day with the Millers, he is quite like
ly to break into grumbles and criti-
cisms that he doesn't really mean
at all.
Once the coffee and stew, the good
corn bread and the prune whip are
inside him, as he settles down at
the radio with his newspaper, he
feels quite differently. The food may
have been humble, but it was warm
ing and satisfying, too; rain is pre-
dicted for tomorrow, so he wouldn't
have worn his pressed suit, anyway;
and he likes the Millers invitation
well enough, especially as his de-
partment boss, Cutter, is TO be there.
And THAT is the time for Nancy
to accept peace overtures in friendly
simplicity, brushing off apologies
with an amiable, II knew you were
tired. It's all right"
Tired Mother Flares Up.
Or perhaps it is Nancy who flares
up. Any woman who has sole charge
of a household and two or three
small children, all through a Sec
ond, third, a fourth rainy or snowy
day, has a right to run away into
the high mountains and never be
seen again. She can't do that, but
what she CAN do is break loose at
the first unpleasant word, and meet