The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1889-12-06
EQUAL FREEDOM.
What Women Need to Broaden Their
Minds and Increase Their knowledge
of the World.

4
The husband Of the future will doubt
less be quite as happy as the husband
of the present, says Mary ii. Krout. in
Chicago Inter-Ocean, but he will have
accustomed himself to some radical
changes. One who has already felt the
touch of the new spirit said the other
day:
81 do not wish my wife to stay at home
all the time. She has an angelic tenn
per naturally, but when she remains
within doors for three or four days or
a week, l find that she becomes too much
absorbed in domestic matters, which
do not believe ought to consume any
woman's entire time. When she goes
away to public meeting or to conven-
ton. to be gone a week or so, she comes
back refreshed. enthusiastic and ready
to take up the old duties with sufficient
interest and energy. She has met many'in-
teresting people, she has had the benefit
of an exchange of ideas, and the family
| have the benefit of what she has seen,
told with the vividness and sympathy
which makes the conversation of a
bright woman, who has both heart and
brain, always delightful"
And this is one man who is already ac-
cepting cheerfully and philosophically
the new order of things, which is as in
evitable as the rising of the sun. He
was not the head of wretched. disor-
derby household, where unruly children,
| ill-temper and selfishness held sway
His home was luxurious In it's appoint
ments, and the sons and daughters had
grown up in the midst of cultivation,
with an example of gentle manners,
constituencies and purity of thought
and speech, daily exemplified in both
! parents. The mother was an ardent
equal-suffragist, but she was no less
womanly on that account, and she had
the hearty approval of her husband in
all that she did, relying upon him for
counsel and advice. There is deal of
truth in this mans opinion. To SYM
metrically developed mind, a knowledge
of the world is as necessary as knowl-
edge,of books.
The gad-about has always been con-
demned by press and preacher, and the
| woman who stays at home held up as
the pattern of wifely and womanly per-
lection. But it has never occurred 70
any one that the woman who gets no
glimpse of the outside world. who has
no opportunity to measure her mental
and moral stature by the mental and
moral stature of others, grows narrow,
querulous, and eXacting. She is an alb
solute authority in her own domain. and
there is no appeal from her decisions,
however ill-advised. She sees nothing,
and. unless she has a love for books,
which, strangely enough, such women
rarely have, her mind is concentrated
upon the petty details Of housekeeping
and the affairs of her neighbors-what
Mrs. Brown wore, what Mrs. Smith had
for tea when she entertained the minis
ter, what dreadful creatures the John
son children are, and how shockingly
that Miss Thompson carries on. These
are the themes that occupy her tongue,
and the mind that, from want of use,
grows feebler and narrower from day to
day.
A wise old man remarked that the
reason so many old people lost their
learned any thing worth remembering.
The same is true, with difference, of
women. If they go from home, not to
the neglect of home and children, but
enough to see what life is like, they are
laying up fund Of knowledge that shall
keep them young at threeScore. The
centennial was of incalculable benefit to
the country. Thousands of women went,
saw the magnificent display, had a
glimpse of the civilization of other ma
tons, and took the keen memory of it
all back to their homes in the hills of
New England or the farms in the West
ern prairies. Had there been any means
of getting accurate statistics, it could
have been demonstrated that the amount
Of gossip for the following year in their
respective neighborhoods fell off at least
sixty per cent. Their talk for months
afterwards was of the great pictures
they saw, the wonders of art, the mar
velous mechanical contrivances, and all
the beauty and splendOr and ingenuity
that was concentrated there. 1t gave
their minds healthful and natural food,
and more was accomplished to abate the
sin of SANDER and backbiting than could
have been done from a thousand of the
minister's best sermons.
1t is observable that when even an Or
binary woman goes from home for few
weeks or few months, she comes back
enlightened with what she has seen,
and it is of this that she talks. The
women who are the most entertaining,
who are most agreeable and whose So
ciety does not tire, are not those who
have spent all their days knitting in the
chimney corner, or within the four
walls of kitchen porting over a cook
book. However men may profess to love
this purely domestic character, they tire
of it as they would tire Of an unrelieved
diet of bread and honey. They like the
saude piquante of bright talk, bright
wit, knowledge Of affairs; and, whatever
nature may have done in the bestowal
of talent, it rusts if it is not kept bright
by attrition with the world. The very
man who talks longest and loudest Of
''womanly women" by which he means
those who stay at home constantly, is
usually the first to seek the society of
the more entertaining woman whenever
he has the opportunity.
Miss VIDA LATHAM has been ap-
pointed assistant in the Pathological
Laboratory of Michigan University.