Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1947-12-12
By KATHLEEN NORRIS
Bell Syndicate.-WN

h1IAI d IllCS llOlllS, dllO
like things clean and suit
L able" writes an angry
man from East St. Louis" but
I doubt if any man could stand
what my wife puts me through
in the way of house furnishing!
We inherited handsome big
place in the very best part of
town, and do what she will, Ada
can't pretend that she'd ever
like to move, except with the
girls to the mountains for a few
weeks in summer. But what she
can do with this dignifed old
place, that my grandfather built
70 years ago, is a marvel.
"She's always been a little like
that, talking lamps and rugs and
running around with samples of
curtains and wallpapers. But now
it's an obsession. Three years ago
it was the drawing-rooms, then the
bedrooms, playroom, basement.
Then she had the house painted an
entirely new color, and now she's
back on the drawing-rooms. We're
not through paying for the base
ment, we haven't touched the paint
bill, and Ada, sitting looking around
our upstairs sitting room last night
said thoughtfully, This room must
be done over, and might as well
get at the drawing-rooms, too, while
I'm about it. I'll telephone Kathy.'
'Kathy is the decorator" the
letter goes on, land what she gets
in commissions runs into hundreds
every year. Kathy finds a desk, a
chandelier or pair of candlesticks
that will just exactly fit some corner
of my house, and Ada falls for
everything Kathy suggests. The
other day I found on Ada's desk
some pictures of an old stable
turned into a garage, and 1 had fit.
We took the front out of our old
stable 20 years ago, and we can run
three or four cars in there, but Ada
keeps reminding me that it isn't
really garage.
Always Something New.
There are new fire irons or dining
room chairs in the house every few
months, well, I'll pay for them all
eventually, but what makes me mad
is the talk; talk, talk of Grapes and
fringes, contrasting tones and eff
fects. We're going to have almost
black walls downstairs now, as
Kathy says it was a crime to paper
them in cream three years ago; it
was another decorator who did that.
All the fixtures have to come down
and we won't have the use of those
rooms for three months. Even the
little girls-we have four, are pretty
sick of being bounced about while
their rooms are fixed to suit Nom
my. What can a mere man do?"
Well, Carleton, if these symptoms
in rich and pampered wife were
not spreading also to wives of all
grades, I'd laugh at your letter, and
suggest that you continue to give the
little woman her head. You appar-
emily live in luxurious home, and
can afford to be only mildly impa-
tent with the restless vagaries of
your wife, and her subjugation to
the ubiquitous decorator, but there
are thousands of husbands who
can't meet the bills for fashion S
constantly changing ideas on glass
ware, china, linen, curtains, chro-
MUM, lacquer, wallcovering.
To take an interest in home is
good, indeed, it's essential in the
wife and mother. And to want things
to be fresh, comfortable, clean, is
all good, too. But too many women
today appear to be in a continual
race for change. All the old furnish
ings are torn out, the comfortable
chairs and the accustomed lamps