DR. FRANK CRANE'S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 125, 17 August 1927, Page 14

DR. FRANK CRANE'S DAILY EDITORIAL

WHY NOT? (CupyrXahl, ia«7 . her honeymoon Mary Lewis declared, “I am going to be a wife, mother and prima donna all at once.” Mary Lewis Is the blue-eyed girl who was once a singer at Kansas prayer meetings, but speedily rose to the pinnacle of the New York musical world and became a prima donna in the Metropolitan Opera Company. Then she married. She declared, “It isn’t necessary to renounce anything in order to be married. I am going to be a wife, mother and prima donna all at once. Babies do not spoil the vocal chords. Look at Madame Schumann-Heink—• .hirteen children! lam a husky, corn-fed American girl and will be able to do anything Schumann-Heink did.” We hope that Mary Lewis’s plans will successfully be carried out. We may be pardoned for having doubts. Somehow marriage and stardom do not seem to fit. When two stars marry there is liable to be professional jealousy, and -when a star marries a non-star there is apt to be another kind of jealousy. Just why the limelight and marriage do not go together it is hard to say. Matrimonially speaking, the man who saws wood, or tends a store, or drives a milk waggon, or is a conductor on a street car, seems to have a better chance than a Prince or a violin virtuoso. Somehow, matrimony seems to be especially adapted to Mr. Babbitt and his fellows. All the highbrow novelists unite in picking holes in the institution. Meanwhile Darby and Joan get along very well together. A celebrity needs the comforts of married life quite as much as anybody else. A woman is a solace to a great man quite as much as she is to a small man. The trouble is that walking in the straight and narrow path, behaving yourself and being decent is pretty hard for anyone who has great gifts. It is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that whether he is rich in money or in talents. The more one has of ability and force the more he needs discipline and self-control. Mary has marked out a path for herself that implies a great deal of will power. Of course, she can make a success of it and here’s hoping she will. We cast uo asparagus when we say the chances are against her.