The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1874-12-17
unllOnOred HerOism.

|
When man rushes in among the lances of
hostile army;to make way for liberty" Ike e
Arnold Winkelreid; or goes down to his death
| with his musket at "present," like the sergeant
on board the sinking troop.ship Birkenhead;
or, in word, does any act which shows utter
abnegation Of self, his fellow men rightly style
him hero and give him q place, more or less
exalted, in the temple of Fame. As a rule the
chances for doing this kind of thing ARE rare,
and,l consequently, few men ARE 500 exalted.
With women the, chances are still -rarer, and
| the heroines, socaled, Of the world might
almost be reckoned on ones fingers. The
herones so-caled we say, for if the real he
roines of.the earth were to be assembled we lean
| to the opinion that an army would be got to-
gether which would stretch across the land, in
broad columns, from dawn to darkness. To
people who let "the woman question" severely
alone, on the ground-partially tenable, We ad-
mit-that it lis an unmitigated nuisance. this
assertion may seem somewhat sweeping in its
character ): but we think that most men have
facts in ther possession, if they will take the
trouble to examine them, which will, by infer
entail reasoning, 60 a long way toward prov
ing its correctness. The heroines to whom we
refer are at least nne-tenths of all the house
keeping women in the civilized portions of the
globe-and, very likely, quite as large per-
centage in the uncvilized portions, too. 80. a..
Housekeeping, by the average man, is con-
sidered as rather good institution in its way,
for which the requirements are a.house, wife,
and certain balances in bank of sufficient
solidty to meet the demands Of the butcher,
baker, and other similar foes to domestic econ
omy. Having provided the three requisites,
the average man considers his part of the duty
handsomely attended to, and putting the first
in charge Of the second. with gracious permis-
sion to draw upon the third as occasion may
require, he settles down to his accustomed yo-
cation with heart at peace with all his kind.
The average woman hurled headlong from the
matrimonial altar into the sea of housewltely
misery is about as far from settling down as
anything can well be, aud unless she possesses
physical strength and nervous force in an ex-
ceptional degree she is more than likely to
drift about hopeless fragment of hotsam un.-
til her cares and worries turn her into jetsam,
and she goes quietly to- the bottom. In point
of fact few men realize what constant up
hill task housekeeping is still fewer how much
genuine pluck and honest bravery a woman
must possess to do her work faithfully, and yet
maintain any show of outward serenity. Dr.
Clarke has shown, with painful distlnctness,
the physical unftness of women for continued
labor and this fact being borne in mind, the
steady way in which most women face steady
work is as remarkable as it is worthy OF all
praise. Praise however is blessing which
seldom falls to the housewives lot Ii things
90 wrong the average man does not hesitate to
express his opinions freely-,sometmes iorcl-
bly-upon the sins of omission committed up
on the premises; but when things go right,
then the house is kept simply as 1t should be,
and, Judged from the stern standpoint OF mas
culine justice, the mere fultillment OF DUTY IS
unworthy of especial commendatlon. Even
"affectionate husbands fail as rule to appre..
ciate at its true value the unseltish DEVOTION OF
their wives, especially during the first few
wears of married life The excessive care eX-
ercised in marshaling the domestic legions to
the exact discharge of their appropriate func-
tions :, the hours of anxiety between the time
that dinner is served, and the shy visits mean
while to the kitchen, and modest suggestions
to the end that absolute excellence may be as-
sured the little heart-throbs felt by Beatrice
as she watches Benedik raise to his lips the
first spoonful of the soup which she Is quite
aware is not as hot as it would have been if the
tureen had been first ''scalded OUT" the desire
to 90 away somewhere and cry her eyes out
when Benedik makes awry face over the pud-
ding of her own manufacture, and suggests the
propriety of discharging a cook who COM
pounds such frightful messes--a desire which
finds expression in little laugh as she ac-
knowledges the authorship of the questionable
dainty, and says something about Rome not
having been built in a day; and the hours
struggle for the moral strength necessary to the
administration of fitting lingual castigation to
Bridget the morning after that awful first late
dnnerl All this, seems -veryat atrihing to Bencdlk,
even if he happens to so much as think OF 1t,
but to Beatrice it is an aggregation OF real ana
great miseries, for woman's nature is tar
finer organization than a mans, and troubles
which to q man are trumpery, TO woman are
terrible, and it must be remembered that sor-
row is great or small precisely in proportion to
the strength to bear it which the sufferer pos
sesses But tevcn allowing that each individual
worry is small, when the number OF worries,
and the fact that they arc arising at short and
irregular intervals, is considered, the sum total
is anything but trivial. ~.
The "Iron Maiden" at Furnberg has
clasped time and again in her deathly embrace
the forms of unhinching martyrs; but the
stoutest and iirmest of those who suffered for
Righteousness sake gave in at last, under the
wearing horror of singl drops of water falling
upon their heads. When we think, then, how
our wives and mothers and sisters stand ready
under the calling fire of little household woes,
how they not only keep an even front to the
foe, but endcavor for the main part to ignore
the fact that there is any foe to fight against,
and how, when they drop in the ranks killed
outrght-as only too many do-thelr last
thought is not for their own suffering, but tor
the lack of comforts which must come to the
men to defend whom they have been doing bat
tie their life long-when we think OF all this,
truly do housekeeping women stand forth clear
" with the garb of hcrones upon them and
the glory Of heroism irradiating their unset
fish lives.
REMARKABLE PRESENCE OF MIND-.The
than. Nnrtheast Gc0rainn riYes the following