The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1878-04-27
From our regular Correspondent.


From our regular Correspondent.
When Chesterfield said that women were
only children of larger growth, with an inter
esting tattle, and sometimes wit but that he
had never known one to possess solid reason
and GOOD sense, or to act cOnsequcntially for
four and twenty hours together, it is quite evil
dent that he had never come i'll contact with
the Washington species, maid, wife or widow,
Had he met a Washington adventures, and if
he had gone into good society he would Ger
tainly have found her, he would have met MS
equal and more too If he had begun to flat
ter her as he advised his son to do, on any
subject from her understanding down to the
exquisite taste of her fan, under the impression
that she would gratefully accept the smallest
compliment, and greedily swallow the grosscst
what would have become of that duality Of
the devil and the graCes, Lord Chesterfield?
He would have been taken in destroyed
He might practice his graces, his fattery, his
diabolical .je nc sal quoi upon United States
Senator, on Ben Butler, or Sam Cox; but with
all his knowledge Of the bean moRdo, as it was,
the Becky Sharpe of Washington might teach
him thing or two that would cause HIM to
admire. The century and quarter that has
elapsed since Chesterfield wrote has nat left
woman beealmed in the wake of its mighty
evolutions and revolutions The queen OF the
cannbal islands is more tastetully tattoocd
than was her grandmother, and the belle OF
this habitat has more in her head if not in her
heart, than had her progenitress of the day of
Chesterfield The Washington society woman
has one grand absorbing passion-an enthu-
siastic devotion to herself that has made her
stoical on every other subject; she may have
her smiles and her tears, her joys and her sor
rows, but they are not for others. She adores
dress, kneels at the shrine of Mammon, burns
incense to dear mealy-mouthcd society, fawns
upon the powerful and ecvates her exquisite
nose at the knock -kneed, potbcllicd and weak.
She is an audacious, persevering, pioneering
little body her motto is excelsior, and her
Alps is the social ladder. Sooner or later
probably later, she will get married to a sent
mental youth with wellbalanced hair and
money; or, to what she would prefer, money
with only septuagenerian encumbrance. Mon
ey, subsidiary to self IS the supreme object of
her life, and she will secure it, through mar
rage if she can, but at any rate she will Sc
cure it. Since the days Of Babylon there have
been other careers for women at capitals than
matrimony.
Yesterday evening in passing Talmadge
hall, which adjons the old theatre where Lin
coin was murdered, observed that it was IL
Illuminated, and asking the long-haired man at
the door what he was to have, he replied, "a
lecture by the great high priest of spirtuallsm,
Mr. Davis" | remembered that when quite
boy had read book on spirituaism by Da'
Wis, full of transcendcntal jargon, the ily.lcai
of which was adorned with portrait OF the
writer, trying TO look like man of genius and
so paid ten cents and strollcd in
10 hear him. One sees sOg,c queer looking
people in a large hall full of spirtualists 1t
is said that every man has his insanity, but a
spectacle of roomfull of middeaged men
and women elated with homogeneous insani.
W is spectacle. From Mr. Davis lecture |
would infer that his insanity is of the mildcr,
more refined and ETHEREAL type His rhapsody
was as convincing as chaste rhetoric, poctical
hypothesis, and unlmpassioned diction could
make it. The philosophy, or rather misophy,
which he taught was to distrust the senses
with their lore of science, and listen only to
instinct and longing which was real WISDOM
and the hereditary experience of infinite gener
atoms of the human soul He denounced
spectacular spirituaism and so-called materi-
alizaions, and rcproached spirituaists for
wasting money on them The best of his lee
ture was that in which he ridcued a wealthy
Ohioan, whose business detained him in New
York, while his wife took care of his family
n the Buckeye state for paying 81 400 for an
oil painting of his spirit bridc-the woman he
was to wed in the spirit world. He said this
man would spend hours in enamored contem-
platoon of the painting, while his good, homey
wife in Ohio was engaged in the care of their
numerous progeny. When he asked him why
he did not take the picture home, he replied
that he was afraid that it might make trouble
c. As