The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-07
TARANTULA-BITTEN.

From the N. Y. Tribune.
WHAT'S the matter with British wives and
mothers?
There is a certain spider in the East the
bite of which not only kills the victim, but
makes him ridiculous in his last moments by
causing him to gyrate and dance as furiously
as a whirling dervish. Can it be possible
that this diabolical insect has made its way
into England? The late inexplicable beha-
vior of our female cousins over the water has
quickened our charity to suggest some ra-
tional excuse for them. We would accept
the spider gladly. The case is this For
centuries the British woman has contentedly
dwelt in decencies in fact what with her
solid shoulders, red cheeks, thick-soled shoes,
her immaculate virtue and housekeeping, her
church and king, she was decency ITSELF
her American sister quailed before her, guiltily
conscious of thin bones and aching back, of a
daily mushroom crop of ideas, and a head
perpetualy suffering from mild form of
cerebral congestion. From the days of
Chaucer to Dickens, the English girl had but
one type set before her to imitate-a low
voiced woman, chaste, devout, discreet,
whose husband was her lord, her king, her
governor, whose home was the kingdom
where she reigned a queen, and to which she
offered all that her Maker had given her of
gift or grace. Forever
She wings from view o. the nest and knows not
What airs from home"
This type of woman is obsolete everywhere
now, of course: posted as maudlin and silly
long ago. We laugh with the rest at it, Yet
when Christian remembered the messengers
that led him so far on his way to the
heavenly city, the water stood in his eyes"
About ten or twelve years ago, the British
woman found herself frequently in need of
bread and butter: demand became urgent
for new work and careers. Now, judging
from all human analogy, one would suppose
that into these new careers she would have
gone as driven by hard necessity, carrying
her old self unimpaired as far as possible,
clinging desperately to the chastity, the
modesty, the sweet and tender graces that
gave her individuality. Viola, ruffilng it for
sore necessity in hose and doublet, yet
swore by nothing but her youth and inno-
cence On the contrary, the question of
work is suddenly dropped out of sight Into
the field of politics, law, religion, the British
maids and matrons rushed quarrelling, strug-
Cling, greedy, more like troop of wild
Bacchantes than reasonable human beings.
There is not vexed and foul subject which
men have toiled over for generations,
which they have not dragged to light and set
about the straitghening with the brains and
fingers so long devoted solely to crochet
and tattling. Men follow breathless, crying,
"All right, as the fair invaders mount ros-
trum and pulpit, or seize ballot and pill-box.
But at one point men staud appalled,:
Why need women throw away their personal
modesty? Why drag off every rag and vestige
of decency as we'll as their abhorred shackles?
Men have been physicians, and have made
laws, and yet preserved the seemly out tward
decorum necessary to public welfare; but how
is it with their wives? The fashionable
women initiate the demi-m0nde, and the re-
formers, with Spartan heroism, deny them
selves infexibly single blush. In Edinburgh
the female medical students, smiling, unwink-
ing, and complacent, persisted in attending
mixed clinics until the professors protested
against them in the name of decency, and
procured the division of the classes which q
word from the women would have accom-
plished at first. Next the fair creatures
seized upon the act for the prevention of
contagious diseases, a subject unfit for the
handling of any but the wisest nd.most sin
cere of legislators, so great was its social i'm
port, and so foul and prurient were the ideas
to which 1T gave rise. For the last six months
women have fought to take it out of the
hands of Parliament. Not only matrons, but
young girls, have lectured and written about
it, have run hither and thither over the
country chattering and petitioning on a mat
| ter which they could have no part in de-
Gliding, and should have blushed to name.
We do not hear that the other great social
problems before the nation were honored
| by word from them. The Hindoos beg