Elmore bulletin. [volume] (Rocky Bar, Idaho) 1889-1906, 1892-01-16
WOMAN AND HOME.
a MIDDLE AGED WlFE's PATHETIC,
UNEQUAL STRUGGLE.

Keeping Up Appearances. warning
Aesinss Fsne fowders--seelal America
In s5o-Eeenemy--A Giri's Education.
The Nighteap--HouseholdH Hints.
Most finely organized women arc 10 sus-
ceptible TO the quality Of the moral atmos-
phere that their very personality alters with
their conditions. They are eloquent In one
presence and dumb in another, quite irre-
spective OF their likings or dislikings. In
the warmth of sympathy, OF interest and ap-
proval, evan in tine comfortable medium of a
decent civility, they flower out into variety
and q gracious agreeableness In the chill of
Indifference or tolerant silence, their men
tai powers shrink into torpor; they have
nothing TO say. and IL, from a sense of 10y
atty to the domestic idea, they try 10 make
talk, they are tacitly informed that they sue
coed In being tiresome
No unequal struggle is more courageous or
more pathetic than the effort OF a middle
aged wife to conceal from herself that the de-
bonair lover Of her prime, her Gratiano, 20
gay, SO airy, speaking his infinite deal of
nothing, Il converted into the silent boor of
her meridian. The tenderer and more con-
scientious the woman, the more ready is she
20 excuse, but the more she suffers When
oteAA&AiD 'otAft-1 uDttft ul ulkuI With ntINY
step and heavier countenRnce, bidding her q
scant good evening, sitting silent through
dinner, and, by way Of post-prandial enter
tainment, falling asleep in his chair, burying
himself In the magazines or spreading out
his business papers and working ut them
with n conscious ''See how I am ready to
slave myself TO death for your in every firt
Of the pen, she says 10 herself land TO the
world, where he needs defensel that be is
worn out with work and anxiety, that he n
absorbed In tho pious task of providing for
her future and the childrenis, In case he
should fall a martyr TO his domestic deyo-
ton, and that she must not mind his morose-
ness, which In simply nervous exhaustion for
which he Is not responsible
But she Is not deceived She knows that
be owes her something more and higher than
the "heaping up dust from year TO year.
She knows that the eveaongs and Sundays
and the holidays ought to belong to them
together, TO be used in the building up of the
home, which is so much more than the house.
She knows that no matter how hard he may
have worked, and how much he may have
worried, he has met pleasant experiences
seen pleasant faces, had some variety of feel.
ing In every days round TO relieve its monet
ony, and leave him fresher than any twilight
uuhE hhtAAS MNf nt ufHtIGuCt II IUuL nc
makes 81 his wearincss a fortress, intrenched
behind which be may comfortably and safely
defy all conjngal and social claims, while shs
turns her fatigue into a means of grace, re
proves herself for self indulgence in longing
20 yield 10 lt, and goes out to do the socia
duty that cannot be shirked, or sits reading
or working in the room with her opprcssor
infinitely lonely in either case.
1t is right that man should secure com
petence for wife and child, who without hin
might eat the bitter bread OF poverty. Blu
II he cheats their present of all that make
Il worth having, for tho sake Of future tina
may never come, he Is guilty Of a folly tina
Is cruelty. They are dependent on him 70
their daily joy as much as for their dali,
bread. To supply the one, he has no right 3
pretend to himself that he may stint tn
other The police reports of wife beating
and wife tormentings are too horrible 10 B
read. But that brutality, born of thought
lessness and selfshness, which deprives th
wife Of the moral oxygen that Is her right
which keeps her in the devitalized air OF In
differences, In q greater wrong, because til
victim In more sensitive and the tyrant NOR
enlightened d-Harpers Bazaar.