Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-10-20
SOME SINS OF WOMAN.
Harriet Prescott Spofford Tells How
Her Sex Sins in Self-Defense.
DECEIT IS TIE ONLY WEAPON
She Ras to Weld Against the Strong Arm
of Law and Man.
MORE SINNED AGAINST THAN SHINING
WRITTEN FOR THE D1srArcH.i


To say that women have no sins that are
not shared by men-that there are no dis
tinctively 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, land
they differ only from the sins of men in be-
ing Of minor degree.
Woman is the lesser ma and all her motions
matched with mine
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and, as water
says one Of the men In splenetic mood; but,
SO far as fact has anything to do with his
lines, it is in reference to her sins only that
she is the lesser man, since they are in gen.
eral as much slighterthan her brothers sins
as her body is weaker and her temptations
smaller.
In general, let it be said, because once In
while there comes a Fredegonde, a Brin-
villiers, Theroigne, to show US of what,
under fostering circumstances, women are
capable, and where, in doing nothing but
what many men have already done, they
appear so much worse because so much more
is looked for from them. For indeed, If their
sins are generally less, their virtues are gen.
orally greater than those of the other half
of humanity, and there is every reason why
they should be, in their nature, their educa-
ton, and their seclusion.
If, according to the new theory, woman is
the race and man the variation, woman
should be the conserver of the virtue of the
race; and certainly nothing bends more
strongly to this than the urgency of the
duties Of motherhood and the tenderness
that motherhood evokes; indeed, duty and
tenderness belong to all feminine human ma
ture that is true to its law Of being and its
first development.
woMAN's ANNEXATION,
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 shoul.
ders; the boys Of family are off at their
play when the girls are at home helping
their mother; the son marries when he will,
the girl as frequently lets love go by be-
cause the old parents need her; and she is
not praised for any of it; no one expects it
to be otherwise; duty, kindness, love and
sacrifice are recognized to be parts of her
personality, and she would not be herself if
she did differently.
And when motherhood is called in ques-
ton, does not every child know to what the
mother is equal, save in those exceptional
cases where she chances to be what garden
ers call a freak It 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
so 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 be-
cause another is better; and he himself is
the first to acknowledge it On occasion. It
is in approaching these virtues, and in car
rying them to point beyond the customary
feminine experience, that men are, often
finest; as in the missionary priest who for
gets himself tor his race and who dies for
his faith, and in the physician who equally
forgets himself, encountering loathliest dis
ease, giving tireless DAYS and sleepless
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.
GUARDED FROM EVIL.
Yet it may be said that women are so
guarded from their cradles from knowledge
of evil and the contamination of the worser
world that anything else than purity, tenn
perance, and such positive forms OF good
ness becomes difficult for them, and there
has to be something inherently wrong in a
woman for her to go astray; while she
learns in the home atmosphere the necessity
of self-denial and selfrepression, and all
her power for love is daily strengthened
there.
Were she out in the world as her brother
is, she might by possibility lose much that
now seems hers by right, although she might
gain in brea1th Of view and in large nobil-
ity. 1t is close upon large nobility, indeed,
that women find their weakest point; the
narrow view hinders them from the wide, as
ones hand held up before the eyes can OBJ
scure the sun; they do not look at the good
of the race so much as at that of their own
home; and where not themselves, but those
they love are injured they find it all but i'm
possible to forgive; If this is sin, all the con-
centrated sweetness of their being has gone
to make crust round that sin.
In fact, there is but one sin of which
women are possibly more suilty than men,
and for that men are mort responsible than
they; it is the cowardice which, where it ex-
ists-and, thank the heavenly powers, it
does not exist among all women-makes some
women subtle, cunning, treacherous, false.
woMAN's ONLY WEAPON.
The capture of the strong arm in primitive
times, their only recource has been to
please; their only weapons have been amia-
bility, concession, craft. They would not
have been made 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 human right to
attain these ends, and, Of course, they
neglected no means in their power 10 do so.
They had abuses and punishments, too, to
escape; they had children to be shielded |
from cruelty, they had faults to be hidden |
fiom hard masters; they ayailed themselves,
then, of what in great commanders is called |
strategy, in great statesmen diplomacy, but |
in ethics is called deceit.
Weak in body and timid by consequence,
q captive, slave, drudge for generations
that became ages, the sentiment of the COM
munity, with all Its later enlightenment, |
never to the present day quite relinquish-
ing the essence of the idea of the slave |
in connection with her, although cher
ishing it perhaps unconsciously, woman
has had to resort to craft to carry her ends |
ill she has found herself in danger of be-
coming sly as matter of second nature.
With this acquired predisposition of hers
from the ancestral bond-slave, man has
,nly needed to be of too domineering and
autocratic turn in his family in order to de-
velop the Objectionable quality in wife and
daughters, till brutality has brought about
evasion, concealment. and dis
and tyranny has been followed by
cunning, as the whale is followed by the
RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN.
The man who viii not let his wife do