The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-01-16
SINGLE WOMEN.

From the NJ Y. Tribune.
The social position of unmarried women of
middle age in this country is an anomaly.
While the matron and the young girl enjoy
liberty of action unparalleled in any other
social system, the so-oalled 'old maid Is set
apart in an exceptional degree of seclusion
and restriction. She is always a surplus-the
one too many. If she makes a career or
home, it is by virtue of her own effort;
neither work nor place is defined for her in
the social machine.
In England, on the contrary, the unmarried
woman Of independent means, with the safe
guard of companion, frequently becomes a
householder and of equal weight with the
matron in society. In countries, too, whose
social organization has been moulded by the
Church Of Rome, the single woman-be she
princess or peassnt-fnds her niche and hon.
orable work awaiting her. Out of this de-
foiency in our society grows half the un-
rest and feverish scheming which make
woman nowadays its most revolutionary
member.
The story of woman in a neighboring city
suggests to us this difficulty, and hints at q
possible cure. She is about thirty, we are
told, possessed of good looks, a competency,
and more than ordinary culture, but without
a husband or any home ties. Curiously
enough, she has taken up neither q mission
nor reform. Going into an asylum for blind
women, she fitted up apartments with the
taste and elegance which her habits de-
manded, and has made the service of these
poor creatures the work of her life, while she
does not deny herself the pleasures of the
outside world. There seems to us, in this
course, not only high morale but a COM
mon sense and shrewd perception of the re-
quirements of womanly nature, from which
our reformers might take valuable hint.
''All women, they tell us, "cannot marry.
Let them, therefore, be carpenters, lecturers,
sea captains, if they will" Now, work of
itself never satisfied any woman. 1t must
have certain element of devotion, romance,
self-sacrifice in it, or it is incomplete.
No Advanced Female, we venture to say,
finds in her lectures or the brokering bust
ness alone recompense for the husband, the
home, the baby at her breast, out of which
fate has cheated her. The Church of Rome,
with that keen knowledge of human nature
from which we may always profit, provides
for the sold maid" not only work and sure
and sufficient livelihood, but clothes her in
uniform which hourly appeals to her sense of
romance and devotion. 1t surrounds her
with symbols, pictures, and perfumes en-
dows her with mystical name, a patron
saint, marries her with an actual ring to a
heavenly spouse. She is not Miss Blank,
nurse, needle-woman, or teacher; she is one
with the great army Of saints and martyrs
gone before.
Now, why cannot our theorists learn some-
thing here? Work both for heads and hands
and the chances for livelihood lie before Pro-
testants as well as Catholics; the poor we
have always with us. On the other hand
stands the great army of unemployed single
women. When we find among them the dis
position to cooperate, to call out the produc-
tive capabilities in each other, even to make
money singly, together with the common
sense to recognize themselves as women, in
exorably women, not striving to trample out
the distinctive elements of character by which
God set them apart as such, we discern at
last glimpse of steps in the Slough of De-
spond into which some Of the sex seem to
have fallen.