Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-04-14
WOMAN'S INFLUENCE.
Mrs. Frank Leslie Discusses Man as
a Tyrant and a Slave.
HOW WOMAN USES HER POWEl
A Swe6theart's Influence Begins Where the
Mothers Ends.
SOME ADVICE TO sCOLDING WIVES
WRITTEN FOR THE DrspArcH.l

10 parJ tne compensat10ns, the lnter0epeno-
ence, the one motive of various movements.
Man has taken the hint in his own inven-
tions, and the next time you are shown over
a mandatory just notice how. from the
steam engine to the machine for sticking
pins on paper, the big, pretentious wheels
and beams, and the hideous, buzzing round
saws that seem as il they would fly out Of
their gear and cpt you into mincemeat, are
all at the mercy of some little Insignificant
wheel or bit of steel flying smoothly back
and forward, making no fuss, but always
just there at the right time, and doing the
right thing to hold the big wheel steadily
and truly in its place. There is great food
for thought in a steam engine, and the
next time you are by way of seeing one,
advise you, if the engineer is neither too
agreeable nor too stupid, to examine it.
Working back through machines to ma
ture and upward we come to humanity, and,
studying it with this idea in mind, you dis
cover the same law in active operation.
Every impulse, every motor of human ma
ture hinges upon some other, the life of
every man and every woman modifes and is
modified by some one or several others.
Man is hot only a nomad or individual
atom, he is part of the great cosmos or mod
ulated whole. and rising once more in the
scale of humanity to women, we contemplate
in establishment her place in the economy
Of this great, complex, wonderful whole.
One of those little unobtrusive parts of the
steam engine is they told me, called the
governor, and in the grander machine Of
human nature the unobtrusive governor is
woman.
GUIDED BY WOMAN.
Watch the course of any man who
amounts to anything, and you find at all
stages of his career that some woman, some
quiet, gentle governor has regulated the
action of the mechanism, has softly laid a
finger upon every movement.
1t is truism to say that the boy relies
more upon his mother than upon his father,
comes to her with the griefs or notifications
he would die rather than betray to one of his
own sex and allows her tender hands to
plant seeds in his boyish nature that for
good or evil will by and by spring up
and bear fruit. And 1 must confess to a
great deal of astonishment as 1 watch my
friends and their sons to see how many
mothers fail to recognize their own power in
this way. They plant the seeds all the
same, for nature forces the boy to love and
what they are doing, and the seeds spring
up and bear worldllness, revenge, selfish
ness, deceit and vanity.
Before the mothers reign is over that of
the sweetheart begins, and from then to the
end of his life the boy and man is under the
influence of some woman, who as lover, wife
or friend places her signature upon every
act of his life. Sometimes the man knows
it, more often he does not, but all the same
it is there, and if the life is noteworthy
enough to find biographer, he generally
recognizes and admits the influence.
In reading these lives it curious study
to trace the thread of woman's influence as
it passes from one hand to another, whether
the hero be Louis Quatorze or George WASH
ington or some venerable sage or theologian
If he was a man, his life was Influenced by
a woman, or, more probably, various women,
as the phases of life changed and the need
varied. For-here is another curious fact
in human nature-people outgrow each
other and cease to be useful to each other
even without ceasing to love each other.
MoLDING A MANS LIFE.
once knew q man of splendid intellect
and powers of growth who from various
causes had not received the education or the |
social standing he deserved and was obliged |
to capture them for himself. In his early |
years he met sweet, gentle, innocent girl |
of about his own position in life and fell in |
love with her. She had great and beaut1-
full influence over him in toning the rugged |
outlines, the combativeness and the harsh |
ness of his self-made manners; she refined |
him. Then he outgrew her, and both felt |
the trouble, and at last she spoke it out and |
told him so, and with the courage and hero
Ism OF such gentle souls she made him 90 |
and seek the friendship of a girl he had |
never met, but whom his betrothed knew |
and loved, and who was more nearly his in
tellectual equal. The man went, as most
men would have gone, and the intellec-
tual friendship was formed, and in
turn did its work upon the character, and |
then in turn it palled, for no man ever died
for love of Minerva. At last he married a
good, true, domestic woman, who made a
happy home for him and listened when he
talked OF what she did not pretend to un-
derstand. You may be sure, however, that
it was she who nodded and played the ''gov-
ernor' to the domestic machine, although
neither she nor her husband suspected 1t.
Then-for he was a many-sided man-he
formed friendships more or less per-
manent with many women, and each in
turn placed her silent stamp upon his life,
and at last he died, leaving works the world
admires and values, bu6 to whose formation
influence of more than one woman.
Arsene Houssaye makes Louis XIV, say,
81 learned to govern men in letting myself
be governed by women" And, again.
"God created man in his own image, but
woman molds him in her image; by woman
and in woman we sound the abysses of sin,
or find once more the lost road of salvation;
we who rise, we who eagerly seek the fruits
of the tree of knowledge, we are the sons of
Eve, and we leave behind US the sons of
Adam, the poor of spirit, the base the lag
CARDS who are content to'lie and sleep while
the serpent coils around them Tbera is
a great deal more which I should like tn
transcribe were it not for limited spaee.
but you will find it in the "History Of
the Fourth Armchair of the French Acad-
envy"
woMAN'S METHODS.
We need not go to France, or to the pages
of poet or historian however, to discover the
truth underlying Houssaye's glowing lines,
for one of the advantages of the study of hu-
man nature is, that its books, its pictures, its
drama, lie open to the public, Sundays in
cluded, and not even q free ticket is de-
handed for the exhibition. Just open your
eyes and look, or if you are a woman look
in, and study and understand your own life,
or if you are a man and do not already
grant my theory, consider your own life
from new departure, and see if I have not
thrown food of light upon it.
To be sure, the methods are often very
quiet, very hidden, almost imperceptible in
their course, but those who have eyes to see
will find them. Often the mans pride
takes alarm and suspecting that he is being