The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1884-07-25
uNGALLANT SENTIMENTS.
A Denial That Woman Loves Nature.
Disparagement of the Current
Daphne.
Nym Crinkle IN Neac York World.

II
As a rule l have found that women do not
care for nature.
Their sentiment does not take to the ex-
ternal world. We have no Cowpers or
Thomsons among the female poets. At the
best their descriptions of natural scenery are
without that delicious and subtle feticsm
that characterizes the man.
He is always more or less in love with
outdoors, and when he isn't we call him
eliminate.
1t has often amused me to see the retired
merchant, lawyer and literary man trying to
renew the joys of his youth in the country,
and the women of bis household putting up
With it as if it were an amiable weakness,
Ike his love for brandy and water at dinner.
He gets enthusiastic over the outlook and
vista, ho'raves about the glimpses of water
between the trees, he grows eloquent over
the rustic delights, the isolation, the calm
and balm and oxygen. They listen and ac-
quiesce and look at each other out of the
corners Of their eyes and say to themselves ::
"They all come to this sooner or later, and
they must be humored."
But the fact Is men never come to it. 1t
is born in them. 1t is the undying heritage
of their nomadic barbarism.
If you have ever been out afield with an
artist you must have noticed with what reck-
less juvenllity he threw himself into natures
arms. He was at home with the old trees /;
the rocks knew his voice and answered him
jocundly; the streams leapt for him anG the
coverts held out their dusky hands to him.
In a little while he had taken you back to
Helas itself, and the wild wood was popu-
lous with his creative tone and the airy
children of his fancy had TUNED nature into
a sweet articulate poem.
You must have noticed, too, what mys-
terious benignity came into the elements
when he approached them. The storms wet
him without hurting him. The very miasma
of the fens was dissipated when he threw
down his fir branches and went fast to sleep
over the wet earth. How he apostrophized
the boles of the old trees and got harmless
elfn music out of the gnats and midges.
You could see that the bob-o. link and
Phoebe bird perched closer when he was
around and had something to say that no.
body but he could understand. And so, re-
calling to you Francis of Assist, Aristoph-
anes and Thoreau, this penniless god made
glad and merry out Of loving Imagination
the desert stretches of the earth and called
back the naiads and nerieds-those haunt
ing spectres of golden youth-to give their
phantom beauty to the wilderness.
never found woman, artist or poet, who
got so close to nature as this. She Is always
a little afraid Of the lusty dalliance of out
doors. Perhaps 1t is because being more
spiritual she has fine contempt for the ma
terialism of existence. Perhaps it is because
being passive aud receptive she cannot con-
quer nature with a coercive and masterful
affection.
At all events she does not people her
woods with satyrs-,she never gets any fur
ther than tramps. If she is an artist she
always takes a feather brush with her TO
dust off the rocks and everglades. If she is
poet she dreams of lawn parties and flirta-
tions even on Olympus.
But as every man carries in his breast q
nereid that he is always trying to realize,
and always at some time in his life writes
the story of Paul and Virginia to himself, so
women get to unconsciously bumor him and
make pretense of loving nature for the sake
of peace.
This will, in part, explain the awful fraud
that goes on every summer, and is just now
commencing. Men are all striving to get
their women into the country, and the
women, young and old, are pretending to he
mad to get there.
Delightful deceivers! They abhor the
country. The only nature they care for is
human nature.
In another week or two they will be packed
off. And the fathers and husbands and low
ers In Wall street and West street will be
contented by picturing them running wild
in the communion with nature, basking In
the sun, getting up with the cockcrow,
drunken with oxygen and worn out with
be sitting in full dress OH verandah with
their parasols open, dreaming only when the
train or boat will arrive and bring the men.
And when the men arrive the charming
creatures all began to bsbble about the sun
rise and the dew. You'd think to hear them
that they were all Daphnes and had been
romping all day over the mountains, plung-
ing into cool streams and wiping their white
hands on the birch leaves. Estimable liars /!
They have been lying on their backs reading
the Seaside Library, and the sweet milk
from the dairy came up on tray and had q
metropolitan smell of Santa Cruz rum about
1t.
There are no Daphnes. You may get her
up in Watteau hat and sylphide lawn
dress and high heels and place to prone
made. Ifyou find an Arcadia for her she
will cry out: "What place for lawn ten
mis- Let's invite gang"
If you could buy sprite in the market
for your summer she would have to have q
dog cart TO exhibit her baby waist in.
SO poets, artists, dreamers, lovers, fly to
their own Imagination when the season
comes on. They make the woman Of their
dreams out of their own fancles. They 60
off on stag parties for trout, for bass, for q
long cruise through the coast rollers, and
they perceive In the sea fogs and the noun
tain gloom, the girl with the "mooning ey es"
dodging them like an ignis fstuus.
So they paint her, they write her, they
carve her, but when she plants herself on
the hotel verandah and says: "Here am,
take me, the poet replies: "Oh, no; your
corsets are too tight your toes are pinched !;
your lungs are only half inflated, and your
fans too big. Nature intended you to firt,
not to romp. III we're to put you on my
altar you'd fall off and break your neck at
the first clap Of thunder"
Think AbelarJe, IL he is around, will have
to put an advertisement in the papers:
Wanted, . summer Heloise who loves ma
tnre, and whom nature loves. She must
have good appetite and no parasol. To
such an one permanent engagement Is
offered.