The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-02-13

auu tnat might make woman vote on Jne
wrong side. There is not in my mind much
prospect Of the expulsion of drunkenness by
female suffrage.
As to woman's wages to be corrected by
woman's vote | have not much faith in
that. Women are harder on women than
men are. Masculine employers are mean
enough in treatment of woman, but if Y u
want to hear beating down of prices and
wages in perfection, listen how some women
treat waSherwomen and dressnakers and
! female servants Mrs. ShYlocl is more
merciless than Mr.. Shylock. Women,
fear, will never get righteous wages through
woman's vote, and as to unfortunate
womanhood. women are far more cruel and
unfOrgiving than men are. After a woman
has made shipwreck of her character men
generally drop her, but women do not so
much drop her as hurl her with the force of
a catapult clear out, and off. and down, and
under.
l have not much faith that woman will
ever get merciful consideration and justice
| through woman suffrage, yet | like expert
mentS, and some of my friends, in whose
| Judgment | have confidence, are so certain
| that alleviation would come by such process
| that | would, if | had the power, put in
every woman's hand the vote. / cannot see
| what right YOU have to make a woman pay
| taxes on her property to help support city,
State and national government, and vet
deny her the opportunity of helping decide
who shall be Mayor, Governor, or Presi
| dent. But let every wife, not waiting for
the vote she may never get, or, getting it,
| find it outbalanced by some other vote not
| fit to be cast, arise now in the might of
the eternal God, and WELD the power of a
sanctified wifely ambition for a good ap-
/ proximating the infinite.
| No one can so inspire a man to noble pur
poses as a noble woman, and no one SO thor
| oughly degrades a man as a wife of unwor-
thy tendencies While in my text we have
| illustration of wifely ambition employed in
the wrong direction, society and history are
| full of instances of wifely ambition glorious
| ly triumphant in right directions. All that
was worth admiration in the character of
| Henry VI was reflection of the heroics of
his wife Margaret. William, Prince of
Orange, was restored to the right path by
| the grand qualities of his wife Mary. JUS
| tinian, the Roman Emperor, confesSes that
his wise laws were the suggestion of his wife
Theodore. Andrew Jackson, the warrior
and President, had his mightiest reinforce
ment in his plain wife, whose inartistic at
tire was the amusement of the elegant cir
cles in which she was invited. Washington,
who broke the chain that held America in
foreign vassalages wore for forty
years chain around his own
ture likeness of her who had been his great
est inspiration, whether among the SHOWS
at Valley Forge or amid the honors Of the
! Presidential chair Plny's pen was driven
| through all its poetic and historical do
| minions by his wife Calpurnia. who sang
| his stanzas to the sound of flute and sat
among audiences enraptured at her hus-
bands genius, herself the most enraptured
Pericles said he got all his eloquence and
] s4, hiC ba
wife of Grotius rescued him from long i'm
prsonment at Lovenstein by means of a
| bookcase that went in and out, carrying his
| books to and fro, he one day transported,
| hidden amid the folios, and the women of
| besieged Weinsberg, getting permission
| from the victorious army to take with them
so much of their valuables as they could
carry, under cover of the promise shoul-
dered and took with them as the most i'm
portant valuables their husbands-both
achievements in a literal way illustrated
what thousands of times has been done in a
| fgurative way, that wifely ambition has
been the salvation of men.
De Tocquevile, whose writings will be
potential and quoted while the world lasts,
| ascribes his successes to his wife and says:
"Of all the blessings which God has given
to me tho greatest of all in my eyes is to
| have lighted on Maria Motey.n Martin
Luther says of his wife; II would not ex-
change my poverty with her for all the
riches of Croe sus without her." Isabella of
| Spain by her superior faith in Columbus
put into the hand of Ferdinand, her hus-
band, America. John Adams, President of
the United States, said of his wife: ''She
never by word or look discouraged me from
running all hazards for the salvation of my
country's liberties" Thomas Carlyle spent
the last twenty years of his life i'll trying by
his pen to atone for the fact that during his
wifes life he never appreciated her in
fiuence on his career and destiny. Alas
that having taken her from a beauti-
full home and brilliant career he should
have buried her in the home of recluse and
scolded her in such language as only dys-
peptic genius could manage, until one day
while in her lnvalidism riding in Hyde
Park her pet dog got run over, and under
the excitement the coachman found her
dead. Then the literary giant woke from
his conjugal injustice and wrote the lamen-
tatons of Craigen-Puttock and Cheyne
Row. The elegant and fulsome epitaphs
that husbands put upon their wives tomb
stones are often an attempt to make up for
lack of appreciative words that should have
been uttered in the ears of the living. A
whole Greenwood of monumental inscrip-
tions will not do wife SO much good after
she has quit the world as one plain sentence
like that which Tom Hood wrote to his liv-
ing wife when he said: 81 never was any
thing till l knew you.n
o woman, what is your wifely ambition,
noble or ignoble! Is it high social positions
That will then probably direct your hus-
band, and he will climb and scramble and
slip and fall and rise and tumble, and on
what level or in what depth or on what
height he will after while be found can
not even guess. The contest for social position
is the most unsatisfactory contest in all the
world, because it is so uncertain about your
getting it, and so insecure Il possession after
you have obtained it, and so unsatisfactory
even if you keep it. The whisk of a lady's
fan may blow it out The growl OF one
bear or the believing of one bull on Wall
street may scatter it,
Is the wife's ambition the political pre-
ferment of her husband2 Then that will
probably direct him. What a God-forsaken
realm is American politics those best know
who have dabbled in them. After they
have assessed a man who is a candidate for
Office which he does not get, or assessed him
for some office attained, and he has been
whIrled round and round and round and
round among the drinking, smoking, swear
ing crowd who often get control OF public
affairs, all that is left Of his self-reSpect or
moral stamina would find plenty OF room
on geometrical point which Is said TO
have neither length, breadth or thickness.
Many a wife has not been satisfied till her
husband went into politics, but would
afterward have given all she possessed to
get him out