Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1947-10-17
By KATHLEEN NORRIS
N NEW YORK state thu
Bell Syndicate.-WNU Features.

ct N NEW YORK state the
percentage of old bach
L elors and unmarried old
women is increasing; it has
doubled in less than so years.
Everything that touches our
domestic life has changed, and
this is possibly one result. Men
can be very comfortable with
out the little woman, the glow
ing freside, the waiting slippers
and housecoat. Women can earn
real money, enough for motor
cars, fur coats and ocean trips,
unencumbered by the presence
of children or the need to ar
range things with George.
Of course, men and women who
don't marry sacrifice a lot-only
they don't know it. They may have
occasional wrenches of loneliness
and longing, but they consider them
but passing emotions, not to be
taken too seriously. Also they see
the failures; they hear the babies
crying, hear about doctors and den-
lists bills; they study divorce fig
ures. So they think they know all
about it, and decide that they are
lucky to have kept out of it.
Clubs make men delightfully."- COM
Portable now, or faithful old servants
; Filipino, Chinese, perhaps col
ored, take care of their every wish.
They are asked out to dinners, and
fascinating widows, "grass or sod,"
as Mrs. Wigs put it, flank them on
either side. AS they grow richer and
older they grow more and more
spoiled, complacent and adroit at
lodging feminine nets.
Just Fooling Selves.
On her side the single woman has
lots of cold reason too. She can
spend her money as she pleases.
She doesn't have to face the physi-
cal and nervous strain of child-bear-
ing. She can buy charming little
mountain cabin or a weather-beaten
seaside farmhouse, and putter with
it and make it perfect, and pres
emily have intelligent women friends
up for week ends, and decide that
there is nothing like freedom from
family ties. But both the bachelor
and the maiden lady know that
they are somewhat fooling them
selves. They know that there are
emotional and practical doors they
dare not open. They know that they
have lodged the really vital side of
life, and filled its place with make
believe; clubs and clothes and bust
ness success and old silver spoons
and new cars. These are not life.
When the years begin to creep
into the sixties there is nothing quite
so alone as the unmarried man or
woman. Even the widower has his
sacred memories, and perhaps his
children and their children to re-
mind him that he still has strong
ties with life. A thousand tender pic
lures come back to him; he sees his
lovely young wife spent and trium-
plant in a hospital bed, with her
child in the curve of her arm. He
sees the little six-room house, the
shaky slip of an apple tree, the fire.
place with plaster and chips still
plleo III II, anu again tley are view
ing their own home, their first
owned home. He remembers the
blazing logs in winter, breakfast
under the apple tree in summer,
Christmases, measles, money cares,
high holidays. He remembers that
her last look, tired and gray and
glad to close her eyes, was for him.
Nor is this one-millionth part of
what the unmarried lose, and never
know they lose.
Marriage Should Be Glamorous
For I don't think they are to
blame. ! think it's the married folk
who are to blame. don't think they