Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1942)

I wish you'd ask me about Tampons! As a nurse, I know tampons make sense. The freedom and comfort of internal protection are wonderful! But, there are tampons and tampons! Do you wonder which is the best — the right tampon for you? Let me give you some answers . . . Is protection ftn s* The secret of protection is quick, sure absorption! Meds absorb faster because of their exclusive "safety center" feature. Meds — made of finest, pure cotton — hold more than 300% of their weight in moisture. What about comfort? For comfort a tampon must fit! Meds were scientifically designed to fit — by a woman's doctor. Meds eliminate bulges — chafing — pins — odor ! Each Meds comes in a one-time-use applicator .... so easy to use! And Meds actually cost less than any other tampons in individual applicators ... no more per box tnan leading napkins. Try Meds! BOX OF 10 — 25?! • BOX OF 50— 98f* Meds The Modess Tampon felt about me as I did about you, you couldn't let all that high-sounding stuff about principles stand between us — " There was something about that sentence that suddenly finished everything for me. He had spoken of our love in the past tense. I felt numb. All the wonderful rich flow of life had dried up. It was as if I hadn't known the surging violent temptation that could make me forget the training of my childhood, the conventions and morals of my background. Now I felt as shriveled and tight and dead as any spinster I had ever known. I said quietly, "Perhaps you are right. Perhaps we were both — mistaken." And there wasn't a thing either of us could do about it. We seemed to walk home in a nightmare from which we could not extricate ourselves. I stood on the front porch of Mrs. Grayson's boarding house and watched Jay walk away, quickly and deliberately. If he had looked back, I would have called him, begged him not to go. And if I had called out, perhaps he would have looked back, and stayed. But neither of us could break the paralyzing spell of our misery. I went back into the house, and the next morning I took the six o'clock train home with Mother as I had planned. Only when I had planned it, I didn't really believe I'd ever follow out the plan. I had thought I'd try, and some miracle would stop me, would let me stay. I had not dreamed it would be so easy to get on that train and go away from Jay. Oh, but there was nothing easy, after that! Do you know what it is to be in the city and never feel relief from loneliness? Do you know what it is to try desperately to succeed in your work when a thousand leaden weights seem to drag at every nerve and muscle of your hands and brain? Though how I'd have lived without that job I can't imagine. By burying myself in it, by pretending that nothing else existed and had any importance in the world, I lived each hour through. I even made myself fairly useful at Wendell, Incorporated. Indispensable, according to Mr. Martin who was the chief of our department, who also hinted I was personally indispensable to him as well. Oh, yes, I had dates. Not as many as I could have had, for it seemed that being thin just made me into the stylish clothes-horse type that many men in the city like very well. Shadows around brown eyes make them look larger and my kind of dark hair goes well with what Jay called "gardenia pallor,"' which by now had become permanent. Yes, I had dates enough to satisfy my mother, who could not have borne the knowledge that my life had stopped. I don't know, now, whether she was fooled, and after a while it wasn't very important to either of us. Because the dates stopped, as did every device for filling time. I needed every moment I could spare from work to spend beside my mother's bed. We had the best consultants, but they were not good enough. Nothing could be done. She died, Mother did, before another June had come around. Less than a year since I had made my sacrifice, it had become a futile, bitter mockery. I had thought life was hard, before. But now it was as if I woke up from a nightmare and found reality incomparably worse than the dream. What had I to live for, now? My work? How could I ever have thought that counted? Other men? I looked at them and I held it violently, unreasoningly against each one of them that he was not Jay. My life was intolerably empty, like my apartment. I tried to fill each moment, as I filled my apartment, with people or with their voices which I could bring flooding around me with the twist of a knob on the radio dial. I know now I was drowning out a voice that was trying to reach my consciousness, a voice that would tell me something I dared not know. But you can't dodge your own thoughts forever. One night it caught up with me by way of the very sound I had summoned to crowd it out. I had paused in the living room just long enough to sew up the hem of my slip before the house phone should announce my current date. The radio voice was murmuring as usual. I hardly heard the genial tone of the announcer making his introduction but suddenly I was hearing the next voice. The words didn't count, but they were something like this . . . "main difference between now and a year ago for me comes in the morning. Being an art student I was a late riser. I got up when I woke up and took plenty of time over my coffee. But now — well, you folks out there who still set your own alarm clocks, you'll never know till you hear the sound of that reveille . . ." I didn't hear any more of what he said. I just kept hearing the voice, heard it long after he had stopped and the announcer had continued the program, announcing another soldier. It wasn't that the first soldier's voice was like Jay's. It wasn't. It wa? 60 t)cuu rtetto lo~ ELSPETH ERIC — the girl you love to hate when she plays Diane Carvell on the Big Sister program over CBS. She doesn't always portray villainesses on the air, though; you've heard her in roles ranging all the way from comedy to tragedy, -from adolescents to old ladies. Elspeth's father was a doctor, and no one in her family ever acted, but from the time she was a child in Chicago she's always had dramatic ambitions. Like so many talented people, she divides her time between radio and the stage; unlike many others, she's never been in the movies. She likes to ride horseback, and didn't even get discouraged not long ago when, as she says, the horse made a left turn without putting his hand out, and threw her. 40*0*e*O»O»0«O*OIO»OtO«0«O«O»0»O»0«0»0«0»0«O»040*O40«C»0*e*O*0«0»0*O«0«0» RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROR