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Newspaper Page Text
"AIN'T IT FUNNY WHAT A DIFFERENCE JUST A FEW YEARS MAKE?" BY JANE WHITAKER I was discussing the question of divorce with a dear old English lady who had been married over thirty years and whose husband but recently died. "Don't you think there is something wrong with the present foundation of marriage?" she asked me, with her head tilted to one side and her bright eyes inquiring. "You see so many girls who, to use a common expression, are really chasing men. They do not wait to be pursued, it would seem; they become the pursuers." "Yoii believe in the old idea of a woman always assuming an attitude of indifference even though she may not feel it?" I asked. "Yes, I do. Let me illustrate my views by telling you of a little lady sparrow I once had as a pet. Teddy Roosevelt would call it a nature-faking story, but it really was true. "My husband had been ill and was forced to sit day after day in a con valescent chair, so, to amuse him, I used to spread crumbs on the sill of the window to attract the spar rows. "One little lady sparrow was more daring than the rest and she grew to fairly haunt the sill, even when she had had plenty to eat. It finally oc curred to me that we might make a pet of her. "Oh, we were very cautious, but it wasn't nearly so difficult to win her confidence as we had feared, and, not to tire you, we finally got her in a cage and well content. "We used to place the cage on the window sill, so the little lady could get the sunlight and it wasn't very long before we noticed that she was being wooed. "Each day the same sparrow would stand on the sill and ruffle his feath ers and strut about, trying to show how wonderful he was, but that little lady "My dear, she paid no attention to him at all. She seemed to be wholly absorbed in the interior of the room and simply couldn't see him. "Of course, we were in sympathy with her suitor and we began a siege to gain his confidence, but that wasn't quite so easy. He would have trusted us more had we opened the door of the little lady's cage and let her fly out to him. "But we did finally manage to get him in another cage and, fearful of her indignation should she prove to be as sincerely indifferent as she seemed, we just placed the cages side by side. "It was really au;using to watch them. He would say things to her from deep in his throat and she would utter a few saucy notes and strut to the other side of her cage, and, if we moved her away to the window, she used to chirp over at him, until you would really believe she was taking a fiendish glee in his misery. "At last we tried the experiment of letting them in the same cage. Ap parently she did not resent his in trusion, but she never lost her haugh ty demeanor. "He used to stand aside while she ate the fattest worms and she never said 'Thank you,' but just took it as her due, and yet, when he got a little cold and moped around, she was a regular little mother of love and seemed to be comforting him every minute. "But hers was to be a brief happi ness, for one day we found she was very ill and nothing we could do would relieve her. "How he worried over her! He