What to Do.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 80, 25 July 1914, Page 5

What to Do.

WITH A MILLION DOLLARB TWO WOMEN'S VIEWS. Some months ago the American Magazine asked its readers to answer the question, "What would you do with one million dollars (£200,000?") Thousands of letters poured in, and threa prizes were awarded, two of them to women, who sent the following answers : I'D DO JBST AS I PLEASED. Most people know just what they would do with a million dollars. And I am no exception. I'd do as I pleased !

Sounds too simple—doesn't it?—anct a little vague and disapopinting. When a gift of a million dollars is mention- "

ed, people usually have all sorts of charitable thoughts about hospitals and poor people, and babies and fresh-air funds. I am not thinking of these things at all. I am not the little girl who wants the big round moon, nor an 18-year-old miss who sighs for forty-'leven lovers, nor yet an old maid yearning for a man! No, indeed! I am just a little woman of 40, who has spent all her Ufa pleasing other people. As far back as I can remember, I have always had to stand tween somebody and something dis : agreeable, or between two somebodies', or maybe it has been three or four somebodies I've had to distribute my* self among. For somebody's sake, I have lived in towns I hated. I have let myself be squeezed into tight place* for other people. And then, again, I've been called upon to puff out my small body, figuratively speaking, to fill situations quite too big. I hav« not complained nor appeared unhappy. People always say it is my "nature" to be unselfish, but it just isn't! So there! 'Way down in my heart or far in the back of my brain I've rebelled!

Never having much money with which to make the rough place* smooth, I've smoothed 'em with myself J Lots of people who - read this (if anyone besides the editor doei read it) will say, "Why, that is the best kind of giving—to give one'* self." Well, maybe it is—let 'em try it. Pm tired! And I'd like a million dollars to get the tired out of me—for a while, anyway. If it is my real nature to be unselfish, then as sure as the sun shines and the tides come and go, I would find myself returning to the old way, vTbut'I'd like that million dollars to ihelp me know for sure! I want a chance to be selfish 1

I would do nothing alarming, nothing naughty nor unconventional, would exhibit no symptoms of "the dangerous age" nor do a single thing to shock anybody, and I'll let you be the judge. I would invest the moneys'in %ood safe bonds—give half the income to those I love, and with the other half I would hie me off into countries near and far, for to see what I could see. Just for a year and a day—not. for ever, because, you see, I am a Californian, and, besides, I live in San Francisco, and—well—l don't . have to tell everything, do I, even if I am a woman? FROM A POOR SHOP GIRL. First I would buy a fine big automobile. That would cost me, at least, ten thousand dollars. I have to stand on my feet eight hours a day, and at times I feel as though I could murder the people I see passing me on my way home, riding by iit their fine automobiles, while I can hardly drag one foot after the other. Then I would go back to lowa and buy the farm that my mother had to mortgage just before she died. I was only eight years old then, but I will never forget how bad my mother felt. I would be willing to pay twenty thousand dollars to get back the old home.

Next, I would spend one thousand dollars for clothes. I have only one black dress. If I'm invited to a dance I have to wear my black dress/ If I go to a funeral my black dress is appropriate, if not beautiful. Or a wedding, it is all the same. On© can't buy many clothes on ten dollors a week.

Then would com© one thousand dollars for jewellery. Bight now my jewellery consists of a lucky bluebird, ring that cost me ten cents. Everyone tells me I have an excellent soprano voice. One teacher offered to give me lessons free of charge; but some days I would be too tired to practise when I came horn* from work, so lie refused to teach m» any longer. I would be willing to spend ten thousand dojlars on my voice.

There's a girl who works at th« same counter that I do who has tuberculosis. I would give her tea thousand dollars to make her as comfortable as possible until death would end her suffering. She is dying even now, standing on her feet. I would spend a year studying vocal music, and then take a vacation from my studies and tour the United States. This would cost me about two thousand dollars. When I had seen all of America, I would start on a tour of the world, stopping quite a time in Germany to renew my study of the voice. ». I would travel and study until I became famous as a singer, or found that fame was not to b© mine. I would be very happy and could travel on and on for ever, as I have no on« to hinder me except Mary Allen, who would probably only lire long enough to bl«gs me with k«r laut breath. < <