Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1874-06-04
From Hearth and Home.l
The Claims of Society.
BY ETHEL c. GALE.

Ties Win us QlSSlpallOQS, IT'S SSuuluO
pleasures with its frivolities. But try
to evade it as we may, human nature
is social; and if the pure, the intel
lectual, and the witty will not under
take the direction of this powerful
characteristic, they cannot justly com
plain of the consequences when they
leave to the vicious, the friovlous, and
the vulgar the care of providing nu-
lfriment for the mirth- allowing, abund-
hngly social nature of their sons and
daughters.
In the present state of society it is
the sons who apparently suffer the
most from this condition of things
the daughters can be prevented from
| frequenting many of the worse places
| of resort where their brothers go with
out restraint. But in the end all suffer
equally Men take their tones of feel
| ing from women, women their tones of
thought from men. It is universal
law of nature, acting and reacting
| with the force and precision of the
| tide. Men and women created for
each other cannot live without each
other; man cannot be degraded in
thought or principle without woman
being Immediately lowered in the same
proportion. If woman's standard of
love and devotion is brought down,
mans is instantly debased. o! it
makes my heart bleed to see dear little,
pure minded, innocent, loving boys
and girls, grow up into men and wo-
men, coarse, envious, suspicious, un-
loving, who each laugh at, despise, and
make tools, or fools, of the opposite
sex. That such is too often the case
who can deny?
A short time since, while waiting
] for a carriage at a large hotel in q
fashionable watering place, I employed
the time in walking back and forth
over the length ofan extensive piazza,
one end of which passed under the
open windows of the bar-room, the
other under those of the ladies' par
lor. The conversation in each place
consisted OF stream of abuse of the
opposite sex. In the bar room the ex-
travagance and jealousy of women
was declaimed against, while it was
even asserted without voice being
raised in remonstrance, that sthere
was no woman alive who had not her
price. All would sell themselves, hus-
bands, or children, for money to deck
themselves with In the parlor call
men," without exception, were declar-
ed to be "heartless, selfish, sensual ;"
and young lady, one who was appa-
rently to be married soon, was inform
ed that ''though she now thought her
hetrothed to be a man Of honor and
purity, very short time after mar
riage would suffice to show her that
she had only been welded because
she could not be hired, and was advised
to make up her mind to be just as
heartless as he, Or there would be no
happiness rher.
My heart wept for this degradation
of the ''sons and daughters of my peo
pie" And there is no help for it, un-
less those whose hearts have been
touched with the live Goals from the
alta-," will take into their own hands
the reins of society. In each city,
village, or neighborhood, let all those
who wish ''good and not evil' to pre-.
vail, join hands and hearts for the for
nation of such society, within the
limits of their influence at least, as
Sudl1 IlOG l1luh SA11N4 ' N1lIlAO S9
nonomous with weakness and igno
rance of the world. In point o
L wholesome influence how far was the
conversation in the hotel parlor supe
rior to that Of the bar-room? All wo
men, who are women indeed, deplor
the baneful effect of the latter plac
upon their sons, but they often seen
to think it's evil moral results rest up
on them alone. They realize indeet
only too plainly the physical and men
tai suferings inflicted upon the fami
lies of those who are imbrnted b
, drink; but do they comprehend tha
moral as we'll as temporal degradation
is entailed upon the innocent femal
! members of drunkard's family D
they realize how impossible it is fo
anything short of the miracle workin
grace of God, to preserve the purit
/ and loveliness of even the mobiles
- woman, who is exposed to daily an
y hourly contact with vicious husband
There is many man who seem t
think it possible for him to indulge a
unholy passions in himself, and "
preserve the love and reverence of
pure minded wife, expecting her
s'look up'' to him in his fallen cond
ton, while she still occupies the hig
ground of love and virtue where
first found her, and from which he hs
SO decended. Reasonable expectation
Unselfish desire
If the grace of God sustains a VIZ
man so that she follows not her hu
band on the downward path, her lo1
will no longer be the reverential affe
ton of true wife for a true HUSBAND
but partales of the plying care wit
st which q guardian angel, panied an
peIpleNed, but never wearying, ms
y watch over the steps of some far-wal
- dering one. The wife can not reve
ence one who has lost all claims
e. honor. though she can and will pity
But if a woman whose natural pr,
q tector has thus become snare to he
. does not cling fast to the supportir
arm of her loving Savior, who c;
-. measure the depth to which she m;
fall Woman, however strong in b
intellect, still breathe only in an atmo
," phere of feeling In this as they C:
rise higher, SO can they sink low
than men. Even should educatio
rs, public opinion, natural refnement,sa
her from open declension, if she clin
not ever closer and closer to Chris
er she will, like Tennyson's Amy
Locksley Hall,
flower to his level day by day,
The What is fine within her growing coarse to sy
pathze with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is;
And the grossness of his nature will have wei;
to drag her down.
+ Notwithstanding that it is possit
for a woman so situated to live
has near ''the Throne that she is preser
"a "a ed as by angelic guidance from fallil
va into the degradation prepared for h
in I, - e. - 4