Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1879-06-29
CORNELIA f. CRALxS.

GORNELlA #. CRALxS.
Down ON the Sontlmentallsm Of the
GLOVER Mission,
1t grieves me much at any time to feel
obliged to criticize ''the women" One does
not like to seem divided in their own house,
and every true woman should be 10th to de-
claim severely against he; own SEE. But
truth is higher and grander than any house,
clan, sex.
A "fool of a woman should be ''set down
upon" just as certainly as male fool. I
will venture to say, then, that women, like
monkeys, are initiative creatures, and in
many respects and instances their limitations
rise no higher above absurd caricatures of
the original than do the monkeys efforts.
There is probably no more pitiable spectacle
in the world than silly, half-educated
woman affecting sentiments she does not
understand, or trying to act along the line
of great philanthropies, one infnitessimal
grain of which would be too great for all her
brain to grasp, and when only selfish love
OF excitement and ambition for conspic uity
prompts woman to some of these attempts
how laughably absurd does the woman ap-
pear. @
The women of our great self admired and
self-magnified "West'' are no exception to
their sisters in other regions. They love to
initiate, and they fail of q proper conception
of all they aspire to as lamentably as do
other women, and hence enact as great and
as many failures. As little girls "play DOLL"
play "house keeping'' and SO on, SO play our
western women at Lunches without either
the china or the servants to make the faint.
est resemblance of New York lunch. So
play our western women on the summer re-
sort key until one would think that White
Bear lake was big, with tides twice in
twenty-four hours, and that ten mile ride
outside of St. Paul brought the north pole
into sight and secured an iceberg atmo-
sphere.
But all this "playing" and much other in
the costume and manner line is compare
lively harmless, and perhaps only woman
would think of sanctioning them, but
there is one piece of woman's Stiffness I
do walt to speak of particularly.
They have a flower mission "down East. -
Its aim is to supply the sick in the hospitals
and elsewhere with flowers, thus cheering
them at once through two or three of their
senses sight and smell-and constituting a
sort of benediction on the more substantial
benefactions of the dear sisters who have
gone before, and reminding the poor afflicted
ones, even in the midst of the most pressing
physical necessities, that there IS in them
still, not altogether crushed out. delicate,
ethereal senses that make the joys of another
d higher life possible. All this is ''down
East" An imitation we have in St. Paul.
should have written a burlesque, for read
in daily paper, a few days since, as follows;
"The ladies of the St. Paul Flower mission
cheered the eyes of the prisoners in the
county jail with few baskets of beautiful
bouquets yesterday.''
just think of it! The prisoners in the
county jail! This is delightful. A lot OF
abominable creatures, in good health
thieves, tramps, drunkards, rakes-all sorts
of dreadful characters waiting there for a
State sentence or liberation by some bubble
of the law, which will enable them to
resume the road, the torch, and per
haps the knife, to say nothing Of
that other awful assault known to such
wretches, and who would just as soon make
one of these flower ladies victim as any
other. Can anything be more mawkish thar
this
Are all the innocent sick and virtuous poo1
so we'll supplied with flowers in our city that
we have "baskets of beautiful bouquets tc
squander on such brazen, unrepentant loaf
ers and vermin as occupy the county Jail
/ cannot think that this was deliberate
medltated act on the part of my sister
women. The reformation of people in Jail
all of them, of every sort aud every degree
OF crime should be accomplished if possible
and certainly should be undertaken, but this
| flower aspect reminds me of that divine
saying about pearls and swine. No, can.
not think there was any consultation or de-
liberation about these ''baskets of bou
quets."
| The news reporter must have made it u1
out of whole cloth, or perhaps the dea1
ladies' had gossipped away so much of thei1
| time down in that basement that it was i'm
possible to seek out the deserving sick anc
feeble hither and thither, and so some
Madam Patterson Bonaparte, in strategy
and ambition, suggested, ''let's take the
whole pile and dump them in the Jail, which
is not far off we'll get puff in the pape1
for 1t, and its just as we'll, who cares y
hope the flower mission will prosper
but hope it will not be treated as joke, al
diversion, and thereby come into ridicule
the idea of a flower mission I can only
think comes from Heaven, but it may be
g1ggled and gossipped and caricatured unit
1t becomes about as useful as apig's tai
would be to COW in fly time.
tt CORNELIA FLoRAL1s.