Exempt Bride

One of the most troublesome children in Tennessee is Mrs. Eunice Winstead Jones, 9. When her marriage last winter to a lank, 23-year-old hillbilly named Charlie Johns provoked a national scandal (TIME, Feb. 15), Tennessee hastily enacted a law prohibiting the marriage of persons under 14. Last week Eunice Johns caused Tennessee to change another law, when in Nashville State Educational Commissioner William Arthur Bass ruled that neither Eunice nor any other "married children" would have to go back to school in the autumn.

Eunice left her school in Sneedville this spring when Teacher Wade Ferguson switched her for "jumping around." What Teacher Ferguson had to contend with was revealed last week by Eunice's father-in-law, Nick Johns, who turned up in Treadway to inquire about the possibilities of an annulment. He snorted: "She can't learn nothin' in school and she can't learn nothin' at home. I tried to learn her at home, but she don't even know her ABC's. She can't count to 25 and she don't know the day of the month or week."

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