DAME SYBIL THORNDIKE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 11, 11 December 1935, Page 10

DAME SYBIL THORNDIKE.

A LIFE-LONG WISH. Desperately I have always wanted to be a man and the wish has not diminished with the years. Rather has it become more strong, confides Dame Sybil Thorndike. In early childhood I envied the boys their capacity for adventure and their general attitude to life. I certainly joined them in escapading, and the difference of sex did not seem to mattei as we rode through the Kent fields and lanes on imaginary horses and pretended we were outpost army officers exploring the Himlayas. But all the same 1 really hated the boys’ games—-their competitive games. How vile is competition -when one cares for the doing of a thing. I hated running races to win; I liked running fpr itself and I was a very fast runner, too. Tennis—cricket—the agonies Ive suffered both watching and playing. It’s funnv, games are the only things that have really bored me in life, but I am quite prepared to say that this is a fault and a grave defect and that ] am the loser hereby. . , Although in childhood I wished to be a gleaner in the summer and a monk in the winter (I), I feel now I’d like to have been a doctor. This may be just middle age speaking. My increasing interest in healing and the doctor s life was explained to me by a mental doctor the other day, who said: “Any woman over fifty is either a potential doctor or a fool.’’ But it is more than that, I fancy. ' 1 can be content with very plain, almost bare living, which is not the thing for a woman to be. It is lovely to be without possessions, the whole world is one’s own then. St. Paul knows exactly what I feel, but 1 think it is a bit mean and responsibility shirk-

T.ooking back over these thoughts 1 find my reasons for wishing to be a man are all excuses for shirking. Then are men shirkers? No, not exactly—but they take the leap in the dark and women always have to see the way lighted. Men discover new lands and women must make them habitable —in a word: “Find new ways, men; and, women, clear up the muddle!” The male does not possess all things, ‘however, He may get all the best parts in Shakespeare, but he can’t have children, which is the great and lasting thrill that belongs to us.