Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-01-20

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G6SS DHD mind in one way as much
as education forms it in
another. The friction which it affords with
other minds softens preiudices, dissipates
preconceived ideas, enlarges the intel
lectual horizon and animates and vlvltles
the whole intelligence, when it is of
high and delicate kind itself. But the
safest mental preparation for it is that which
does not overvalue or depend upon 1t.
Those who cannot live without excitement,
whether it take the form of parties to meet
the Prince of Wales, or of cheap trips to
eat shrimps at Margate, are unhappy, de-
pendent on others, never independent OF
fortune Club life will inevitably. teach
women to be more and more intolerant OF
privacy and monotony. Women usually
like thing to dangerously exaggerated
extent whan they like it at all. 1T is al
most certain that if they once acquire taste
for club life they will become impatient of
auy other; the constant luid novi? the con-
slant change of society. the mimicry of mas
culine liberties and the ease with which
their personal wants are supplied, will all
become pleasures which will grow on them.
Women's clubs will, l repeat, never be
much needed by women Of the world who al
ready possess all that such clubs would
offer them in more satisfactory FORMS but
they will become
A DANGEROUS ATTRACTION
to those classes of women, unhappily so
much upon the increase, who, not mistresses
of any home where they can reign, educated
enough 10 be restless and vain, owning or
earning competence enough to afford them
leisure but not luxury, protesting a sterile
and unnatural Indifference to the opinions
and affections of men, who plunge into
charlatanism, science or politics, in their
search for excitement
These women, meeting only other women,
will increase their own discomfort and in
noculate with it the contented. The society
of women is not good, in great degree, for
a woman. Women will harm the mind of
a woman much more dangerously than SO
men out of 100. Beware of female init
macies," was said by wise diplomatist to
his daughters, and the advice was sound.
Women's clubs will be hotbeds of such in
timacies.
The Jealous dislike with which men re-
gard the attachment to female friend of
the woman they love is we'll founded. To
the friend are confided the dearest secrets
and the most dangerous condolences, and in
her the lover or the husband almost always
possesses his greatest and most insidious
enemy. Few men are very wise and few
women are thoroughly loyal. All influence
which has tendency to estrange women
from men is bad, bad in itself and bad in its
results. Men are not as virtuOus as women
would like them to be. nor are they often as
clever as they imagine themselves to be,
but, such as they are, they are indefinitely
better objects of women's affections than
women themselves, and the mental atmos-
phere which they bring with them is more
robust and invigorating; whilst their views
are, on the whole, juster and more sensible
about most matters.
THE WOMEN OF THE WORLD.
WHY women of the world are wiser in
their judgments than women of the bour-
geoisie is due to the fact that the former is
constantly surrounded by an ever-changing
society of which men are the most numerous
members and the most intimate in associa-
tion with her; the latter is, on the contrary,
thrown for her intimate associates almost
entirely upon female companions. The man
is, perhaps, the strongest and best man who
lives little with women, but the woman who
lives most among women is by no means the
sweetest or the wisest woman. There is an
inclination among women in the present
days to deity themselves, which is fraught
with immeasurable vanity, egotism and woe
for themselves and others.
Women's clubs will be the nucleus of this
undesirable collaboration now so general in
the weaker sex. There is in women hos
tility to ward men, a jealousy of their powers,
an envy of their pursuits and their awards,
which is pregnant with extreme mischief,
and needs no encouragement from external
circumstance. There are too many, far too
many, women numerically; masses of these
women are we'll educated and unemployed;
they are being taught to believe that their
salvation lies in forcing themselves into
careers already overstocked by men; and the
inevitable result will be a deadly hostility
between many classes of the two sexes.
Clubs will largely increase that class of
women who are already antagonistic to men,
who are restless and uncomfortable in their
homes, who have a passion for physical
science because they hope to satisfy through
it their unwholosome curiosities, and VINO
possess neither the qualities which can at
tain a brilliant position nor the resignation
which can accept an obscure one.
The women's clubs, i. e., those for women
alone, will almost certainly be chiefly con-
fined to the middle classes. Women of
fashion will neither need nor care for them.
Their members will be almost entirely re-
cruited from the large class of tolerably
clever infinitely discontented women who
are often declassees, always discontented
and ill at ease, and who pass miserably from
the fruitless restlessness of youth to an un-
loved and unlovely maturity.
THE DEFECT IN MODERN EDUCATION.
The supreme defect of all modern educa-
tion is that it occupies itself solely with the
mind, and scarcely touches or attempts to
form the character at all, and the more
scientific or Especial" the education be the
more absolutely under its domination is the
DEVELOPMENT of the character neglected.
The human mind is finite, like the human
life: and if very much of one thing be forced
on it, it is greedily filled by this to the ex-
clusion of other and often more valuable
things Unselfshness is more precious
quality than "all the ologies," and tact and
delicacy sweeten the ways of life far more
than does the ability to dissect a living
organism or do an advanced problem in
Euclid. Competition in the schools hardens
into unconscious vanity and egotism the
naturally soft and plant tissues of female
character, and in after years club life, if it
become general for women, will unques-
tionably increase this offensive self-concen-
tration.
The most "clubable" man, the man who |
most frequents his club and makes it the |
center of his existence, is usually also the |
most egotistic, seli-centered, seli-;ndulgent |
of men. 1t is because he studies himself |
exclusively that his club fulfills to him the |
whole ideal of existence and satisfies him |