Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-10-13
WHY WOMEN DECEIVE
Maud Howe on the Popular Belief
That Her Sex is Born of Deceit.
FORCED TO RESORT TO STRATEGY.
Women, as Rule, Are Not More Prone to
Deceit Than Men.
THE YOUNG AMERICAN WIFE OF TO-DAY
WRITTEN roR THE p1spArcH..

brought about by external circumstances
All people held in subsection by mere
brute force are deceitful.
The ancient Greeks had the reputation o.
being deceitful people. "Fear the Greeks
bringing gifts" says an old writer. IF they
deserved this reputation it is because the
Greeks were numerically a small people.
They ruled through their intellectual supe.
riority. Hellenic literature and art were al
their heigh. in the age of Pericles and
Phidias. The ideals of Hellenic art, the
truths OF Greek philosophy are still uupar.
alleled In the worlds history. Had NOT
the Greeks been full of devices and fertile
In strategy, the barbarian hordes of Europe
and OF Asia could never have been held in
check by that nation, which was great in
intellectual dominion, but small in terri
tory and in the actual number of its inhab-
itants.
All people who are held in state of SUBJ
lection take refuge in strategy or deceit.
Until recently the position of woman has
for the most part been a subject one all the
world over. From this fact arises the popu-
lar fallacy that there is something essen
tally deceitful in the nature of woman, as
distinct from the nature of man. That this
belief is a fallacy, and that it is only held
by ignorant or unthinking persons, most
earnestly maintain.
wIGwAM TACTICS.
The1ndlan squaw is the slave of her brave.
She works for him and serves him even as
his horse or his dog work for him, but, un-
like the dog or horse, that Indian woman is
possessed of one of the strongest human in
stincts-the love of power. The only voice
she can have in the community, her very
supremacy in her own vigwam is through
her influence over the men of her family.
This being the case, she must be q very re-
wheedle, and cajole her husband, and by
every possible means secure as strong a
hold as possible over him.
We all know households to-day where
these wigwam tactics are pursued. The
master is irascible, overbearing, and OBJ
stinate. The wife is his equal in most re-
sDects and in some his superior, in self-con-
troll and good temper particularly so. For
the peace OF the household it is impossible
to directly oppose the dicta OF the master,
who is of a sort that wants to know best
about all domestic matters, the discipline of
the nursery and the kitchen as we'll as the
routine of the stable or the ordering of the
wine cellar.
Now, in the matters appertaining to
kitchen and nursery, this wife knows that
her husbands ideas are wrong and that her
own are right, and by constant series of
small deceptions the tyrant is led to believe
that his measures are carried out, whereas
in point of fact they are quite properly
ignored. do not say that the wife is blame
less, but say that the iault lies first with
the husband, whose tiresome tyranny forces
his wife into subte-fuges for the sake of the
general good. There is large class of men
who have to be thus cajoled.
WOMEN ARE MAGNANIMoUs.
Women are, as a rule, magnanimous;
they like to think their husbands quite as
clever as themselves; there are still women
like Lady Castlewood, who prefer to elevate
q husband who is in many ways their in
ferior, into a sort of supreme household god
before whom all their lives shall be passed
in an attitude of devotion, but this relation
ship is as unnatural and painful to witness
as the other.
There is one head on which the people
who clamor for the deceitfulness of women
are wisely silent, aud that is the compare
tive number of deceptions practIced by one
sex upon the other in matters OF the heart.
Lady Glare We're de We're is a type of proud
coquette which figures largely in romance.
and somewhat. it must be confessed, in real
life; but what offset is that to the deception
and ruin wrought by the men of the same
social standing against the womankind of
lower social grade? All! master cynic, that
cruelest of deceptlons brings up the score of
the men to fearful level.
To go back to our household of the tyrant
and the innocent hypocrite, how often is
that wife who keeps back the children's
naughtinesses or the amount ofthe butchers
bill deceived in the most vital of all matters,
the integrity of the marriage bond? 1t is
well, perhaps, that that census of inideIitv
can never be accurately taken.
1t is the position in which women have
found themselves which mas tended to de-
velop their powers of intrigue and dissimu-
lation; change these false conditions; treat
women as the natural equal Of man, and this
tendency to underhand dealing disappears.
The feminine element all through nature
is recognized as necessarily equal to the
masculine. Two halves are equal to each
other, their sum making the whole in man
kind as in other things.
PROGRESS OF AMERICAN WOMEN,
Nowhere is the advance which our race
has made in the last 80 years so well demon
strated as in the young American woman of |
high standing to-day-the young woman of |
the advanced guard of our civilization. be |
it understood. She has received as good an |
education as her brothers, and only too |
often has more time to devote to the arts and |
letters than he has. Taking the people from |
20 to 80 years old to-day, children of we'll |
to-do parents all over the country. we find a |
higher average of culture among tine women |
than among the men. This is neither a |
pleasant fact nor healthy state of things;
but it is the result of the extraordinary |
impulse Of the last 25 years, |
which has carried our young men into ac- |
tive commercial or professional life at a
very early age. The competition is so fierce
that. unless man is willing to be lacgard
in the race for money, he has neither time
to read, to study, nor to cultivate his tastes.
In a community where the balance OF the
cultivation is on the side of the women, the
question, care women deceitful?" can have
but one answer-an emphatic ''Nop' Men
and women are, first of all, human, having
all the great human traits and instincts in
common; after this they are male and female;
but how often we find feminine soul in
the form of man, and the strong masculine
spirit of enterprise looking out from the eyes
Of some fair womanl
Men and women are said to be children of
q larger growth. IF you make it worth a
child's while to deceive you, he will prob
ably do so, and the same is true of the grown
up children.
The river must make its way to the ocean;
If you block up its course with all sorts of
it will take circuitous route;
remove the obstacles and it will make
B straight line to the sea. So with a man
DR. a woman: life. liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, or, to sum the three into one
Tord, freedom, is the end to which we all
:end; make the road easy for us, and we 90
honestly and openly to our goal. Hedge us
hnnt with all sorts of restrictions and nse |