San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1889-08-27
WOMAN AND HOME
SOMETHING SENSIBLE ON THE "oLD
MAID" QUESTION.

Evening DRESS OF Long AgO-Ihe Discreet
shopper-she Wouldn't Pay Poll Tax.
A Lady Who Was Tired of Getting Into
Print-Items Of Interest About the Fair.
1t is somewhat to be wondered at that a
term of reprcach has been manufactured out
or the words which state the social condition
Of an unmarried female Of more or less date,
term largely used by the vulgar among
young girls and rather dsused in good So
ciety, term, too, which may in its own time
be applied to the larger number Of the young
girls using it now, since, though many are
called. few are chosen.
Considering that the spinster has been
deemed a fair target for the receipt of all ran
dom shots with this supposedly unpleasant
term, it is also not a little singular that
wherever an ideal or powerful quality has
been personated in the poetry and religions
and myths of the raceit has been in the shape
Of an unmarried female. There are the Nine
MUSES., for example, the presentment of all
art, all song, all soft motion all thought and
relation; what weird and withered sisters
they would be by this time had not Pan by
dying swept them all into nothingnsss The
Three Graces, too; what old fashioned, lean
richly meriting the opprobrious term if years
could make them do sol And Numa's nymph
Egeria one trembles to think what changes
time would have wrought in her. making her
the fit subject for the epithet, had she not
gone down into the gulf with Curtius and
many another fair and noble dream. The
Sibyls, already verging on dangerous ground,
as it were, in their own time what must they
no had tbny continual jpuy,, tp cIIrc
One does not speak of the Furies or the
Harpies, since one seems privileged to doubt
if such powers as theirs for controlling the
husband and the family were, under the gen
eral law that allows no waste in the cosmos,
allowed to be useless, and if there were not
unmentioned husbands in the background
there each like the felt but unseen companion
of Sirius. But there is Pallas Athene, lofty,
gray eyed, beautiful and severe, who must
ever be liable to the imputation, together
with the farouche and silver brOwed Diana;
and there is Hebe, as open to the charge,
wonder as we may if years, in whatever
number, can make of her bloom anything
less than loneliness. Heavenly and eternal
old maids, living in a separate atmosphere of
poetry and the past, if you can bear the
epithet banded with opprobrium, with all
your beauty and bloom and immortality of
youth, and receive no hurt, shall not those
Of less degree of years, even if also of less
degree of beauty and charm, bear the same
and with an equal Indifference
The Goddess of Liberty, too, in our own
day, is without doubt an unmarried female
now of many years standing, whatever Bri
tannia with her trident may be held to be;
but perhaps we may leave these mythical
women, and the ParcR, and the NOrns, and
all the rest, and come down TO the base of real
flesh and blood il history, and ask if it dis
turbed certain great women to be branded
by the unpleasant epithet, or if it disgraces
others to share the epitheI with them now
To pass by st. Cecilia, st. Agnes, st. Catha-
rine and all that cloud of witnesses. and come
upon the secular: Shakespeare seems to have
thought well of Queen Elizabeth, as she
walked ''in maiden meditation, fancy free
Joan of Arc, it is true, died young, but if her
horoscope could have been forecast as for one
10 remain on earth, it is safe to believe it
would have set her down as one of the i'm
mortal spinster sisterhood.
And among those of lesser social degree,
may we ask what share of disgrace fell to
Jane Porter, the Chrouicler of Sir William
Wallace, the creator of that immortal hero
ThaddeuS of Warsaw, typo of half the heroes
born to the pages Of romance since then? And
the same may be inquired respecting Hannah
More, who was as large a factor in the rear
ing of the brilliant Macaulay as any other
person; and again of Dora Wordsworth, near
ly as rare poet as her brother-to mention
but a few out of multitude, and not to
touch upon our own day at all.
Few people would have cared, not to say
dared, to speak of the great Eliza" as al
old maid; few would have thought of the
term with Joanna Ballie or Maria Edge
worth or Mary Milford, and perhaps none in
connection with Mary Lamb; but they are
all Of the band, nevertheless And on the
whole, it is not so poor a thing to oelong to
Dand that can produce the ideals of art,
poetry, religion and philosophy. that could
produce great ruler, great warrior, and
such souls today even as those of Miss Dix
and Miss Nightingale; and in this view those
who are subject to the reproach involved in
the cOlloquial name of the band, can afford
to consider the jeers of those who use the
phrase, as of no more weight than the chat
tering of sparrows in the city streets. -Har
per's Bazaar
la. ..ET -xN