The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1874-11-27
Mrs. Tilton as Realized Ideal.

I --%NN-aa
or all the unhappy actors so merci-
lessly revealed to the gaze of q curious
world by the lifting up of the curtain
upon the Beecher-TiltOn drama, none,
it appears TO me, are more to be pitied,
none have been more Inexperienced,
than the woman who has been publicly
and pitilessly branded by all parties as
weak and pitiable liar. And yet to
me the part she has borne in this whole
matter, the revelation made of her char
acter by this loathsOme scandal, is re-
plete with warning lessons to women
which it is full time to give careful heed
to.
Accepting only the accredited and
known-to-be-genuine documents of the
scandal at no more than their full value,
we have yet in them q wonderfully dis
tinct and sharply drawn outline of Eliz-
abeth Tilton as she really is-one of the
highest types of cultured womanhoOd,
the embodiment of the masculine ideal,
the realization of the kind of woman
men hold up to women as being most
thoroughly and completely womanly in
masculine eyes and dearest to masculine
hearts.
Ages of preeept upon precept from her
masters, of careful culture by men in
the direction of the feelings, tastes and
sentiments of the physically inferior
sex, have been at last successful in
evolving just such cultured, timid, affec-
tiOnal and harmful women as Elizabeth
Tilton appears TO be.
In her, two of the most intellectual
masculine sentimentalists of the day
have eonfessedly found their ideal real
lied, have fed their cultured tastes by
eager seeking of her companionship,O one
as her husband, the other as her dearest
friend-and with what result? To turn
on her weak head the vials of public
scorn-to hold her up to public gaze as a
wanton and liar!
Mrs. Tilton's fate is full of warning
lessons to thinking women. 1t is time
for such to ask themselves if the mascu-
line ideal of wOmanly grace and sweet
ness is the best model they can find by
which to shape their characters and
build their truest happiness? Itis time,
too, for men to forbear praising wOman's
weakness as her chiefest charm, and to
begin to help her to become strong in
intellect and in judgment, rather than
encourage her to debilitate her mind by
pampering those defects in her which
fiatter his self-lOve by keeping her his
inferior.
we nave BOou IlBiib " dSSuLuei Say ;
DIR. Bushnell in his "Reform Against
| Nature" "that if we would have women
/ left us, and not mere female men, that
there is no woman who can pitch her
/ self into the wrangle and debate of a
bar, and do it for a living, without be-
coming virago shortly. Indeed, it is q
considerable part of her incapacity that
she is not wicked enough to sift, expose
and vigorously score the lying tricks Oi
! evidence"
/ That is the sort of lesson men of intel
lect constantly desire to impress upon
| the feminine mind.
So DIR. Holland, in his new poem,
"The Mistress of the Mause," which
will be admitted n safe and welcome
guest into thousands of homes, holds up
anew the old, weak, unreliant masculine
ideal as a type by which the romantic,
pOetry-lOving girls of to-day may model
and measure themselves. The prayer OF
| Mildred, 1.-THE Mistress of the Manse,"
reads like an extract from one of Mrs.
Iilton's beautiful, tender, charming, and
self-depreciating letters to her husband {:
Teach me, and lead me where to find.
Beyond the touch of hand and lip,
That vital charm Of heart and mind
Which in a true cOmpaniOnship
My feeble life to his shall bind -
20, dearest Fatheri may no SlOth
Or weakness OF my weaker soul
Delay him in his kingly growth,
Or hold him meanly from the goal
That shines with guerdOn for US both -
And DIR. Holland still further helps
prop up this harmful, health h-destrOying
idea of womanhood by affirming that
"No woman in her soul is she
Who longs TO poiSe above the roar
OF motley multitudes, and be
The idol at whose feet they pour
The wine OF their idOlatry."
And she who strives to take the van
In conflict, or the common way,
Does outrage 10 the heavenly plan,
And outrage 10 the finer clay
That makes her beautiful to man.
Now this is all wrong. We live in an
earnest, practical age, and we want a
stronger and higher type of womanhood
which shall be able "tO sift, expose and
vigorously score the lying tricks of evil
dence" for herself and for her dependent
children.
Bettine's letters to Goethe have for
years given pleasure to sentimentalists
of both sexes, who have gloried in the
weak, wOmanly admiration felt by this
''ehild," as she fifty names herself, for
the genius of the great but selfish poet,
and they have thus done incalculable
mischief in encouraging woman to pros
titute herself in self-abasement at the
feet of weaker men.
We want no more Bettines, charming
as her gushing, transcendental and su-
periieial letters are we want no more
Elizabeth Tiltons, confessedIy lovely as
she is in her weak helplessness and un-
reliability. We want a strong-minded,
truthful, Independent, yet still loving
womanhood-one able to guard against
the snares and pitfalls spread for the un-
wary feet of defenseless wOmanhoOd by
wicked and conscienceless men. We
want the old idea of masculine woman
hood set aside, and a new and better
ideal set in its place. There are hund-
reds OF women living to-day, who, taught
too late by hard experience the mistake
they made in fostering in themselves
the childish sentimentalisms of the Mrs.
Tilton type of womanhood, have wept
their bitterest tears because of the suffer
ing thus entailed upon them.-,SdrG 4.
Underwood in the Boston Investigator.
The mechanical power of vegetables
is receiving considerable attention just
now. A squash experimental with at
the Agricultural College, at Amherst,
Mass, is now struggling successfully
under weight of 1000 pounds. In Pei
ham is a birch tree growing out of
ledge of rocks. The tree is about two
feet in diameter and nearly thirty feet
in length. One of the roots has forced
its way under a huge mass of rock,
weighing, according to the estimate,
fully forty tons, and has detached it from
the main rock, so that about an inch in
tervenes.
The satirists have exhausted consider
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