The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-03
SPIRIT or THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
WHITE CATS AND WOMEN.

permission was suffered to he changed into a
much prettier white princess. In her new
shape this charming creature met, saw, and
conquered one of the most excellent matches
of her time.
1t might have been said of them, as it was
in later and more commonplace days of a
dashing young British nobleman and his
bride, that
"Cupid had never seen bedded
SO charming beau ana belle,
AS when Heryey the handsome was welded
To the beautiful Mary Lepel"
The sun and the stars wrought for them as
for Tennyson's lovers, rolled on with the
heavens to their blissful marriage day, and
around again to happy night. For season
all was Eden in their home. But it chanced
that after time the princess, waking, like
Whittiers young lady in the New Hampshire
- ''the first dream Of a BRIDE"
gazed forth from the swaying curtains of her
nuptial COUCH and, gazing, saw a sight
familiar at once and strange to her trans
figured soul. In the silver honeymoonshine
which bathed the apartment with its mystic
beauty she beheld, sporting upon the dapered
Persian tapestries Of her hoor harmless
but most unnecessary mouse. Swifter than
thought the feline instinct in her feminine
heart reawoke. She leaped from the side of
her unconscious lord, and in moment dis
and quivering whiskers hotly pursuing the
quadrupedal prey Of her quadrupedal first
estate. The mouse she caught; but catching
the mouse she lost, and forever lost, the IN m.
A pathetic old story it is, but pregnant with
many meanings; and now it comes back to us,
interpreting after a most lamentable wise the
darkness which, as all men and not few
women also perceive, has of late begun to
smear the sweet face of the heavens only
yesterday SO bright with promise for the
future of woman and of woman's rights.
It is Boston, we regret to say, which sends
us now this apocalyptic cat 1t is Boston
which reveals to us how obstnately covers
the ancient Hebrew Eve in the maj este form
of the modern Teutonic Velleda. Do we
speak in parallels? 1t is only because the
thing of which we speak saddens us over
much We shrink from the truth, which yet
we cannot help but see, and which, seeing it,
it is our painful duty to proclaim.
Iff anywhere on earth the woman of the
future has been seen by the man of the pre-
sent, it is in Boston. There, if anywhere, we
had learned to look for her, clothed in gold
spectacles, mystic, wonderful. Scorning de-
lights and living literary days, upon her feet
the goloshes of progress, and upon her lips
lecture of reform, the woman of Boston stood
proudly forth the hope of her own sex and
the fear of ours. And to this awful shape
now comes, stealthy and sudden, so mean q
thing as mere milliner, and with bare bod
kin her quietus makes. Ichabod. Ichabod.
Miss Anthony, mourning for her sisters may
well refuse to be comforted
1t was in Boston court of justice that this
evil thing came suddenly to pass. Upon
question of garments q woman of the past,
Phryne of Athens the ancient, routed, cleo
trifed, and confounded bench of magis-
trates, the friends, country men, and lovers
of Solon and of Pericles. Upona,question also
of garments, though in quite another wise, a
woman of the future, Mary Flynt of Athens
the modern, has unveiled the weakness of
her sex and her sex's cause before a bench of
magistrates, the friends countrymen, and
lovers of Emerson and of Wendell Phillips.
Tell we the tale briefly, as a tale of woe
should ever be told. And this the more
willingly that our too faithful reporters have
already told it at length.
A Boston woman, Mrs. Coolidge by name,
dressing not wisely but too WE'LL incurred
sundry bills of charges to a sister woman of
Boston, the Miss Flynt aforesaid. In the
true philosophy of Bostonian life, the milliner
and she whom the milliner clothes should be
but one and the same.
s'If the red slayer think he says,
Or IL the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well my subtle ways
Who pass and turn and pass again."
And so for time, indeed it seems to have
p66u Will hlIs. SOOuuSo Iuc ErTdyeu anu
with Miss Flynt the arrayer. Poplins and
moire antiques, green silk and silk of the
delicate hue of the tea-rose, seersuckers aud
blue cambria, things outward and conven-
tional, impeded not the fluent exosmose and
endosmose of this female soul, dual yet a
unit. 81 have worked for you, writes the
mantua-maker to the mantua- made, 'feelng
you to be thorough, true-hearted woman. "
Fancy such a noble confidence as this be-
tween man -milliner Worth and the Princesses
Metternich and Countesses Pourtales, the
monde and denli-nOnde of ignoble and unin-
tellectual Paris Not trace here of the
white cat, with her muscipular talons sheathed
in deceitful velvet, and her meawling larynx
Economically inveigling the distant and
dubious Thomas serenader of the midnight
and the moon.
But the tempter came.
The husband of Mrs. Coolidge-thanlks,
we suppose, to the war or the tariff, or some
other cengenial Bostonian industry-began
to accumulate Ehekels. Wealth brought with
it the care OF wealth. From signing checks
trustfully at sight of the little memoranda
which from time to time recorded Miss Flynt's
labors in behalf of her ''true-hearted' friend,
Mr.. Coolidge came to inspecting these mem
oranda with O low regard to ciphers, and from
that to flat demands for discount upon THEN
gross amount. TO themasculine mind it may
appear that in this Mr.. Coolidge was, perhaps
not totally blameworthy. For these memo
randa, as spread before lis in ssthe courts OF
law, have in them something appealing
to man considered as q conjugal and
cheek-drawing animal. For one robe of "pur
pie silk, with trimmings" "pads, and pro
tectors, and we know not what other mystic
rious adiuncts Miss Flynt asked of her ''true
e., i A.akio o,fA l. IL