Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-07-14


Often l used to reply
What comes to a woman everywhere?
Washing, and baking, and household care.
declare, it makes me cry
To think how my days go byn'
Then he would kiss me again,
And try to be still more kind;
And tenderly say My little wife,
Would | could give you an easier life.'
How could be so unkind
Oh how could be SO blind
God took him away. one day
Took him away from me.
Now. though | labor the whole day through,
Nobody asks "What has come to you ?'
Nobody pities, or shares
The weight OF my household cares,
If had only known
That should ever find
1t was an angel-love that for years
Worked for me, cared for me, dried my tears,
had been far more kind.
But Oh! was blind-so blind
The above lines, written by Lille f.
Barr, express heartache, not uncommon,
when regrets are useless because too late
How much better to fill the life of every
day with so much love and kindness and
consideration for others, especially for
those nearest and dearest, that when the
Reaper comes to our door-as come he will
some day-remorse Will not be added to
natural sorrow.
Did 1t ever occur to you, my sisters,
what god-send to the masculine portion
of humanity, in the angelic matter of
something to talk about, We "weaker YES
sells" appear to be? And from the earliest
days they have been zealously improving
their privilege. Most subjects get out Of
fashion as time goes on and gradually give
place to others; but not SO the woman
question" Men continue to advise us and
criticise us, to blame us and extol us, and
to hold up for our emulation an ideal but
totally impossible female from generation
to generation with equal gusto and earn
estness. A celebrated French writer has
lately relieved his mind on this well-worn
theme, in one Of the leading journals of
Paris, in terms rather more idiotic than
the general run. Just listen to what he
says of us: "Woman was created coquet-
tish, flighty, tickle and frivolous. Poets
nave said that the only thing lighter than
air is feather; that the only thing lighter
than feather is a woman and that moth
ing is lighter than a woman. She is sent
into the world to charm and fascinate us.
to console us from the fatigues of hard
work, and to fill us with dreams of the
ideal that may render the real in some de-
gree tolerable. This little creature draws
her strength from her very weakness"
But some of us are not "little," this
Partisan idiot to the contrary notwith-
standing-and many of US are not distin-
guished for weakness. And how about
those who were not born to charm, either
in form or feature, and the many whose
highest idea of consoling man is to re-
mark to him | told you So" or at serves
you right" Rather selfish view, it
seems to me, as well as short-sighted one,
to take Of the proper place of the whole
sex the wide world over
This same gallant gentleman insists
that women are losing all their poetry and
charm by jostling with men in various
avenues of study and labor, and complains
with disgust that some French girls actu-
ally went to Sorbonne to 60 through a COM
petitive examination with young men, and
in the uthor's words, "to exchang nge a
beautiful and radiant brow for a very ride
uIOuo ulpIOLud- DuG lie eNluGUlly forgot
that even a beautiful and radiant brow
will not always supply honest bread and
butter. Some of the girls who went to
Sorbonne mean to be lawyers and doctors.
The writer generously condescends to par
TALLY forgive the lady doctors if they will
cOniine their practice to each other and to
each others babies-but rails with angry
vehemence against the idea of female law
yers. He says he can understand woman
playing tragic parts like Rachel, or writing
like George Sand or Madame de Stael, or
singing like Malibran, or riding like Thai
estria, or driving pair of horses, or shoot
ing pheasants in thick CATERS and scanty
skirts-but cannot comprehend how anv
woman can play on violin, even had she
the skill Of Paganini, because in holding
the instrument she makes herself look
hump-backed and destroys the harmonious
lines of her shoulders, which lin the
wretched Frenchman's opinion) are "iar
preferable to the harmony of her violin p'
Fancy anyone thinking it more womanly
to drive pair of horses, or to go out kill
ing birds, than TO make sweet music on any
instrument
Among those more reasonable people
who think about the essential philosophy
of things, the woman question" is devel-
oping beyond the plane of glittering gen.
eralities and beginning to be considered
not altogether from the male standpoint,
as 1t used to be, nor from the woman's side
only, as great many have insisted upon
but from the combined view of the two
sections in their relation to one another
The old mistake of assuming that women
are so utterly unlike men, and so far in
ferior to them, that they are not to be
classed on the same plane at all, was second
only to the other popular error of assum-
ing them to be like men. According to
the author of an interesting book called
French Traits" the latter is the mistake
that most Americans are making. He
says that at the very moment when we are
-..isting upon the essential unlikeness ot
women to men, American society is exact.
ing from women a continual exhibition ot
masculine qualities. We require of her
not "strong mindedness," but compan,
condolences that is essentially masculine,
and that We cultivate this quality in our
young girls to the cost OF their feminine
character.
In reply to this the French oracle above
says that French women are far less mrs
cuiine in their tastes than we of America
that, as rule, they strictly avoid all COM
petition with men, conserving their dis
tinct individuality of sex and following
strictly their own bent. He says that
nothing is more common than to hear
American women lament their lack of op-
portunity and envy those OF men; while
in France nothing is rarer, it never occur
ring to French women to regret their sex
He adds: 1t is probable that every Amer
lean woman with any pretensions to fine
mentality feels that her sex is a limitation
and wishes, with that varying ardor and
intermittant energy which characterizes
her, that she were a man and had mans
opportunity, since, in a thousand ways, she
is his rival"
Well, there may be grain of truth in
the criticisms of our cousins across the
water; but fancy that it will require
something more than the choicest rhetoric
of all the literary lights over there to put
the daughters of Eve who hail from this
country one iota below the status of those
born in sunny France, if indeed-compar-
ing nation with nation-they quite come
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