Hungry Horse news and Columbian. [volume] (Columbia Falls, Mont.) 1946-1948, 1946-12-12
By KATHLEEN NORRIS
Bell syndicate.-wNU Features.

" AIM CU. L am SupeTluOuS.
1 am fitted for no special
i work. I am faced with de-
| pendence upon daughter, who
is burdened with two stepchil-
dren and a new baby, and a SON.
in-law who frankly doesn't like
me. An old admirer, 10, with
some property, wants to marry
me. Would you think a woman
of so crazy to marry again?
I have been widowed three
years"
This is part of the rather stark let
ter of Wenda White, who lives in
Boston. I certainly would advise
any woman Of so or even so to
marry an old admirer if she wants
to, but I'm not sure I'd advise
Wenda that way. When she says
that she is superfluous and fitted
for no special work, she adds I'M
consciously that she is stupid, and
stupid woman is not apt to make
a good wife in middle-age. Some
times, stupid little beauties in their
teens make success of it, be-
cause they learn, and they are cute
while learning. But Wenda sounds
rather grim. I doubt if she could
learn now to be a happy wife.
Note what Wenda tells me in
these few phrases. In her three
years of widowhood and in the years
before it, she never has found any
useful work. Not nurses aide work,
not library OF kindergarten or tea
room work, nothing that would keep
her busy and insure her independ-
ence. For the past six years, Amer
lea has been crying aloud for wom-
en- workers, has been overpaying
them, favoring them but not
Wenda.
Her only child has been heavily
burdened with young wifehood, the
premature care Of babies not her
own, the expense and responsible
ity of motherhood, but Wenda sure
ly wasn't much use All she admits
she did was antagonize her daugh-
ter's husband. Perhaps she didn't
want Violet to marry a man who
had two children, perhaps
she felt that Violet's own mother
hood took place too promptly. What
ever it was, instead of making
herself adored by this young couple
and indispensable to them, Wenda
has only made herself disagree
able, and closed that door too.
Wenda Will Fail Again.
Now she proposes to take her
various failures, discontents, ineffi- |
ciencies into still another sphere.
Heaven help her old admirer if he |
gets her A smarter old man
would find woman who had good |
job and liked it, whose family idol
lied her and shrieked aloud at the
thought of anyone walking away
with Nom.
A very young wife may have her
moods, her limitations, her pretty
little faults. But when a woman has
lived so years without learning the
secret of usefulness, service, affec-
ton, then she never is going to be
anything to anyone, daughter, hus-
band or friend.
But so can be glorious age. l
don't mean shadowy, resigned,
vistful time of looking on at life.
mean time for splendid and use
jul living. When woman's hectic
early days are over, her children
grown, herself freed for all the in
-erestS and activities for which che
las never had time, she may we'll
enter into the pleasantest years of
Ter whole life. There is some work
hat a well-developed and expert.
,nced woman ought to be interest
ID in by that time, something she
S eager to do. Her health will be
good if she has learned how to care
or herself, and hundred of the
desires and dreams will