Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-01-13

women's clubs The uneasiness OF women
to initiate men, politically, personally and
socially, is distressing note of modern
civilization. 1t is artistically mistake, 1t
is probably also one morally. 1t is unlike
ness which lends interest to intercourse
quite as much as sympathy and 1t is differ
ence which constitutes charm in companion
ship, as well as comprehension. The land
scape which is uniform is tiresome and so is
uniformity of character.
The mere fact that women should wish for
clubs indicates the immense change which
has taken place in the habits and wishes OF
the sex. Clubs merely supply to men, in
handy and condensed shape, what they
possessed before; but to women they offer
wholly new and possibly questionable ad
vantages. If woman wants club 1t is
indicative that her home does not give her
much that she wants; she may be busy or
an idle person, but she is at all events one
who loves the streets, like DR.. johnson, and
finds pleasure in being associated with
| strangers. To those who are still of opinion
that the finest flower of womanhood is
sensitive plant best cultured In shade and
silence this indication will not be welcome.
The kind of woman who will enjoy club
will not be of the highest order; she will be
| chatty, gregarious, soclable, probably
| fussy and gossiping woman, or she Will
belong to that eminently unlovely and un-
lovable class of women who is in sporting
phrase, ''hard as nails" who wears glasses,
dissects live kittens, and writes learned
ESSAYS to prove the nothingness Of every
thing; truly horrible and appalling class
which it is the especial destination OF the
nineteenth century to have produced.
CLUBS FOR BOTH SEXES.
These two orders of women, with those
other women who are humdrum, hurried
and occupied in gaining their own liyeli-
hood in the most meritorious, but uncom-
Portable manner, will furnish the ladies'
club with their members; at least those
ladies' clubs from which men are excluded.
! Those to which men are admitted will so ex-
actly resemble Hurlingham, Sandrlngham,
the New Club and all other places where
men and women already meet that they are
not worth discussing They will offer agree
able facilities for rendezvous, and this will
become the chief end and object very natur-
ally; possibly when one or two tremendous
scandals have had their headquarters in
them they will be shut up with tremendous
noise and uproar, and society will be neither
the better nor the worse for them. What
are essentially women's clubs are those to
which women only are admitted, as mems
clubs are essentially those to which men
only have access; clubs to which both men
and women go are mere places of promiscu-
ous social resort such as have existed from
the days of Ranleigh and the Palais Royal
They do not affect nor alter the social rela-
tions of the sexes in any way whatsoever.
Clubs to which men alone 90 have greatly
acted on those relations; although only ex-
tending liberties and publicities which men
previously enioved, they have facilitated
mems seeking and finding their bien etre,
both mental and physical, elsewhere than
at their homes, in general society or with
the women to whom they are attached.
They have increased the already large capa-
bilities which men possess for enjoying
themselves in the company of their own
sex and have as their greatest disadvantage
the tendency to make men indOlent and lax
before the requirements of general society.
But these influences are only extensions of
those which surrounded ali male life before
the modern club existed; the corresponding
influences Of the same nature which club
life for women will bring into women's tenn
peraments, associations and habits is a very
much wider and graver matter; the change
which female clubs, should they obtain any
great development, will occasion IN the fe-
male sex will be very extended and it is not
difficult to predict of what kind it will be.
ATTRACTIONS OF CLUB LIFE.
If, as men generally say, club life tends to
make men absorbed in creature comforts
and in a day of small things, it will tend to
detach women more and more from those
unselish affections which demand continual
sacrifices OF both time and comfort The
com portable lounging-chair, the ready-eut
Journals, the well-cooked dishes and the
surrounding atmosphere of cheerful gossip
will seem much more alluring than the
vigil of the sick-bed, the fretfulness of the
feverish child or the long dav alone with
books and needlework and household ac-
counts which is the fate Of the woman of the
middle classes when her father or her hus-
band is away at his business offices, banks
U
entered it, will draw her to it as surely as a
magnet iron; opinions may differ as to the
good or evil of the effect, but we may be
quite sure that Penelope will not be sails
fed with her web ever afterward; she will
find out where her own comfort and conven-
fence lie, and she will 60 to them. In the
receipts which TEEN in the |
press for the concoction of human happi- |
ness it is significant that none of them ever
suggest that it should be found at home.
That idea is too old-fashioned to be thought |
of for a moment; it has been put aside on a
back shelf among the cobwebs with the let |
tiers of Mrs. Chapone. All amusement and |
interest must, it is taken for granted, come
from without.
A WOMAN OF THE WORLD.
in incessant movement, political or social,
according to her bias; it is filled and over
filled by incessant rounds of house parties,
continual changes of scene and climate, often
long and varied voyages, innumerable en-
crammed on the top of one an
other into every hour, now and then only, a
brief, breathless, impatient pause, if any
one dies so near related that momentary re-
tirement is as unavoidable as Grape.
The schemes for making the working peo-
pie happy, of which so much is said ad
nauseam, are all based on the same lines.
They are to be asked out to rich peoples
drawing rooms or to be drawn, as a swarm
of bees is drawn by the tinkling of pots and
pans, about big organ in large glass or
brckwork building. 1t never seems to oc-
cur to anyone that they might by any possi-
bility whatever be happy beside their own
hearths. The infinite indulgence of cease
less restlessness is the sole modern recipe or
the only form of enjoyment which modern
society is capable of conceiving. The ex-
press train is its ideal and symbol. To fly
nc far n. x,o.eib1a frovn opo ro,,3 - Az |