Omaha daily bee., 1889-10-20
A FAILING OF The FAIR SEX
They're Somewhat Deceitful But the
Mon Are to Blame.
HER WIT HER ONLY WEAPON.
Since tho Capture by the strong
Arm in Primitive Times Her
Sole Recourse Has
Been to Please.
Mrs. Sanford on Her sex.

To say that women have no sins that
are not shared by men, that there are
no distinctively feminine sins, is but to
declare a platitude.
Without doubt the sins Of women are
the sins OF humanity; there are none so
peculiar to themselves as to deserve
mention; and they differ only from the
sins of men in being OF u minor degree.
"Woman is the lesser man, and all her mo-
tions matched with mn6
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as
water unto wine,"
says one of the men in splenetic mood;
but so far rs fact has anything to do
| with his lines, it is in reference to her
| sins only that she is tho lesser man,
since they are in general as much
slighter than her brothers. sins us her
body is weaker and her temptations
smaller.
In general, let it be said, because once
| in while there comes Fredegonde, q
| Brmvilliers, Theroigne, TO show us of
| what, under fostering circumstances,
women are capable, and whore, in doing
| nothing but what many men have al
ready done, they appear so much worse
| because so much more is looked for
from them. For indeed iftheir sins are
generally less, their virtues are gener-
| ally greater than those of the other half
| OF humanity, and there is every reason
why they should be, in their nature.
| their education, and their seclusion.
| If, according to the new theory, wo-
man Is the race and man the variation,
woman should be the couserver Of
THE VIRTUE OF THE RACE;
! and certainly nothing bends more
strongly to this than the urgency of the
| duties OF motherhood and the tender
ness that motherhood evokes; indeed,
duty and tenderness belong to all femi-
nine human nature that is true to its
law of being and its first development.
The baby does not go alone before she
Is nursing and loving another baby in
her doll; any two little girls in the street
will have their arms about each others
shoulders; the boys of Il family are off
at their play when the girls are at home
helping their mother; the son marries
when he will, the girls as frequently let
love go by because the oldsparents need
her: and she is not praisedfor any of it,;
no one expects 1t to be otherwise; duty,
kindness, love and sacrifice are recog-
nized to be parts of her personality, and
she would not be herself if she did diff
| ferently.
And when motherhood is called in
| question, does not every child know to
what the mother is equal, save in excep-
| tional cases where she chances to be
| what gardeners call freak? 1t is not
| perhaps, her virtue that she lives in
her child; that she would die for him;
| it is her nature; and it only shows how
near her nature is to virtue-sS near
that, in view of it, it is strange that
| when we think of the creative and sus-
tanning force of the universe it is our
habit to say father and not mother.
| Not that recognition Of the strength
and care and generosity OF the father
Is at all impaired by rendering the
mother her need; it does not follow
| that one is not good because another is
better, and he himself is the first to ac-
| knowledge it on occasion. 1t is in ap-
| preaching these virtues. and in carry-
ing them to point beyond the custom
| airy feminine experience, that men a re
| often finest; as in the missionary priest
| who forgets himself for his race and
who dies for his faith, and in the physi-
clan who equally forgets himself, en-
countering loathliest disease, giving
| tireless days and slaepless nights to the
suffering, and who brings help and
| healing with him in such wise that he
| seems to be the very vicegerent Of God
| and of creation.
| Yet 1T may be said that women are so
| guarded from their cradles from knowl-
| edge of evil and the contamination of
the worser world that anything else
than purity, temperance and such posi-
| tive forms of goodness becomes difficult
| for them, and there has to- be
| SOMETHING INHERENTLY WRONG
| in for tn nStrlV. Ullin
she learns IN the homo atmosphere the
| necessity of self-denial and self-repres-
| sion, and all her power for love is daily
| strengthened there.
Were she out in the world as her
| brother ls, she might by possibility lose
much that now seems hers by right,
although she might gam in breadth of
| view and in large nobility. 1t is close
upon large nobility indeed, that women
view hinders them from the wide, as
ones hand held up before the eyes can
obscure the sun; they do not look at the
| good of the race so much as that of
their own home, and where not them
selves but those they love are injured
| they find it all but impossible to forgive;
| If this is sin all the concentrated sweet
ness of their being has gone to make
| crust round that sin.
| III IlcEc Duu ouC Sin VI WuiCl
women are possibly more guilty than
men, and for that men are more re-
sponsibie than they; it is the cowardice
| which, where it eXists-and, thank the
heavenly powers, it does not exist
among all women-makes some women
subtle, cunning, treacherous, false.
| The capture OF the strong arm in
primitive times, their only recourse
has been to please; their only weapons
have been amiabillty, concession, craft.
They would not have been mad of
| flesh and blood and have been without
| desires and endeavors to attain the end
of such desires. Their sense of justice
told them they had a human right to
attain these ends, and, of course, they
neglected no means in their power to
do so. They had abuses and punish
ments, too, to escape; they had chill
dren to be shielded from cruelty; they
had faults to be hidden from hard mas
ters: they availed themselves, then, of
| what in great commanders
is CALLED STRATEGY,
| in great statesmen diplomacy, but in
| ethics is called deceit.
Weak in body and timld by conse-
| quence, a captive, a slave, drudge for
! generations that became ages, the sem
1 nF he mi oil ito