I JILTED JOE!

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18062, 28 December 1920, Page 8

I JILTED JOE!

BY A GIRL WHO DEMANDS HOME AND FOUR MEALS A DAY. I am but one of a good many girls who have ton/ the bandage from the eyes of Love. We refuse to take on the job of matrimony unless we receive a “trade union wage.” Y’ou may call us sordid and self-seeking, but we blame the men and the profiteers. When my boy asked me to marry him I refused. I left him because —because he earns low wages, and I accepted an elderly widower with a business and a family! Heartless! Perhaps. But I work for a bare living, and I simply can’t face a future of uncertainty. Love is a luxury. Until you can afford to live you can’t afford to love. Love must be backed up by very big personal qualities before it can survive the pinch and struggle of poverty. I have no roseate dreams about elderly men. I know, moreover, that my widower’s family will hote me as much as I shall hate them; but the horrid bread and butter question will be settled. I work in a mill and earn twentyeight shillings a week. I live simply; but 1 can’t save a penny. Not only are the prices of things awful; but even tho work is uncertain; sometimes I’m on short time. More than once the mill has closed down for weeks. Then I suffered, and it made me dread hard timfs. Certainly—knowing what I have gone through on my own—l can’t face the prospect of taking over the money worries of another. Suppose I listened to my boy Joe—or, if you like, to Love? Joe is a dear boy. but he is very fond of himself, and can’t, understand why he shouldn’t have everything he wants. His tvages are £2/10/- a week. His tastes and expenses are worthy of a bigger salary. Now, living at home, he can enjoy a higher standard of comfort than if he were in lodgings; for his mother has a pension and she has rooms let in her house. He has a “taste in ties,” his smokes cost 1/6 a day, and he must have extra pocket money. I know that Joe would not give up the “necessaries” of his single life. If we were married I should have to make the sacrifices, and even then the sum wouldn’t work out. So I “jilted” Joe. Give me a well-to-do widower any time.

My widower will not expect love. Wise man! But he has reached the easy stage of life, when he needs a woman to potter about him and make him comfy like the big baby he is. I can do all that. In return I shall have a nice home, good good, and security from the dreadful strain of being always on the border line.

When you hear a girl say she will not marry any man who cannot, keep her in comfort, don’t condemn that girl until you have heard her case. Ten to one she knows what she is talking about.