The Iola register., 1890-05-09
In WOMAN'S BEHALF.
PREPARING FOR ACTION.

The remarkable thing in the recent
rapid transit of young lady round the
globe is not so much that she accom-
plished the feat in a week less than the
famous hero of Jules Verne, but that
she came back, according to the news
papers, in the same dark blue cloth suit
in which she set forth, and with a hand
bag no larger. These appointments,
says a writer in Harper's Bazaar, were in
fact the key note to her success; if her
love of dress had been stronger, her
story had been longer. Madame Ida
Pfeiffer, the eminent woman traveller of
forty years ago, used to say that any
other woman might travel as widely and
persistently as she did. by simply max
ing up her mind to go without band
box. But the journey of life is a much
more serious thing than trip round the
planet: it takes seyenty-two years in
stead of seventy-two days: and it de-
mands, equally with the briefer jour
ney. that one should travel but little
with baggage, if one would travel in
earnest. And now especially, when
women are resolved to come face to face
with practical outside life in a great
many ways, they must act accordingly.
Like vessels going into action, they
must shorten sail.
OF course the item of dress affords the
readiest illustration. Every teacher in
a mixed school must see the advantage
enjoyed by his boys over his girls in the
greater convenience of their costume
for studio or laboratory purposes. Ey-
cry father knows that his young son
will run to the post-office and back in
the lust five minutes" demanded by his
sister to put on proper street dress aud
button her gloves. knew of an instance
the other day where young lady who
had charmed all eyes in the costume of
a medieval princess in a tableau vivant,
confessed to an admirer that her first
duty the next morning would be to pre-
side at the dissection of a cat in the lab
oratory. where she was stuying anato-
my. Instead of being, like the princess
in the fable, transformed into cat
again. she was to undergo the change.
almost equally difficult. into the anat-
omizer of cat. No doubt young man
woIld have some similar change of ward
rooe to make in passing from evening
dress to surgery dress and back again;
but for him it would usually involve
only the flinging of garment or two on
one chair and picking up other garments
from another: whereas with her the in
terchange would involve a prolonged
session. with unbounded aid from sis
ters, dressing-maids, mirrors. and pin
cushion. 1t needs no argument to show
how women are embarrassed as COM
pared with men by the memorable de-
mands of costume; but the remedy is not
easy, at least for one of the other sex to
prescribe.
But, in shortening sail for action,
other things beside dress need to be re-
trenched. Multitudes of women are
gradually sliding into nervous prostra-
tion. not so much through the work they
do, as through the effort to combine it
with that network of social obligations
from which men in a similar case would
detach themselves. As rule, in our
colleges, and even in business. the hard
working men are not the society men,"
they make their choice, and do not ex-
pect to study hard for half the night and
then dance equally hard for the rest: it
is the effort of their sisters to do this
which wears them out. 1t was said of a
brilliant Bostonian lately dead, that he
was suddenly transformed from leader |
of "the german to 4 hard-working law
yer by the sententiOus remark of an
elder sister-'It is better to be a man of !
books than a man of toes" but it is a
hard doctrine to impose upon q sex so
born for airy motion that. as Jean
Paul says. it would be easy for them to |
make forced march of fifty miles if it
could be done by dancing. And so of
the whole routine of society; while the
author or artist or philanthropist. if a
man, knows that he must simply forego
nine-tenths of it. and that he will be
pardoned for so doing. woman in the
same position finds it infinitely harder
TO make the sacrifice, and is not, like
him, excused for doing so. One of the |
most eminent women physicians in |
America, when l asked her how she |
could possibly combine her profession |
with her duties to her young children, |
proved to me that her professional calls |
and Office hours did not, all told. take so |
much of her time from these little ones |
as was given by other ladies similarly |
placed to what they consider their social |
duties. But" she said, in order that |
/ may do this, those social duties must |
be absolutely ignored I do ignore |
them: but give great deal of offense |
by so doing. We're / man, should |
not be asked to combine them.
In the same way a remarkable woman
carried on large factory in new Eng
land town with the greatest success
told me that the strain on her was much
greater than if she had been a man, be-
cause, although she had no children,
she was expected to keep house, to tend
sick neigh bors. even to watch with them
at night. as if she had no other duty. l
see no relief for women who feel them
selves bound to some work incompatible
with their usual feminine occupations
except to make their choice 'twixt this
and that" as Emerson says, and forego
the one or the other. Nor is this the
end of their needed abnegations. No
one can employ women In any Industry
Of high grade without seeing that they
are still embarrassed by what in their
former more sheltered life were their
shrinking from initiative,
the habit of minute economies, of self
lbnegation in little things 1t is my
experience. for instance, that in sending
, young man to do days literary work
in another town, when his expenses are
paid, he needs no instruction as to hav-
ng comfortable lunch, giving the nee
essary time to it, and taking cab or