The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1892-07-28
THE HOME CORNER.

a If there is one thing in the worl
for which the Home Corner is MOI
a deEOutly thankful than any other,
a is that women are not compelled to g
a into politics. True, great man
=. women have spent the best years {
a their lives in frantic attempt to az
quire the right to be politicians, an
some of them have, greatly to thei
Joy, reached the desired goal an,
worked themselves into this, that o
the other office. The Home Corne
! has no fault to find with them. 1
, even looks upon the female politician
with the liveliest curiosity, and see
her wave her parasol and shout fo
her candidate, with emotions of inter
est. But at the same time the Home
Corner thanks Heaven, fol
the sake of womanhood, thai
women have the right
not to be politicians, and can hold
themselves aloof from the crooked
methods which men learn to condone
and the corrupt means by which men
think it right to gain an end. Prop.
erly considered, the right to keep out
of politics is one of the grandest rights
the women of the nineteenth century
possess; and the highest tribute men
pay to womanhood is their unwilling
ness to see the woman they love sub
mitted to an influence so corrupting.
People who claim that woman would
refine and purify political methods in
stead of being themselves corrupted
are far more sanguine than the Occa-
sion justifies. The lady who asserted
that she did not want rights because
she had privileges, and she pro.
terled privileges to rights, was wise
in her generation. rbe Home Corner
believes that the women of the South
are blessed above all others, because it
is their right to ignore politics; and
because of this it is also their privilege
to be surrounded by the chivalrous de-
votion of Southern men.
Nv
1t was pretty sight last week, to
see the handsome uniforms that filled
the streets, and the lovely young
sponsors with their braided blue
dresses and military caps, but some of
the citizens that watched them looked
on with wistful eyes. at makes me
think of old times, " said dear white
haired lady, whose lips trembled
little as she spoke. "When 1 saw
such sights as this first, our gallant
volunteers were getting ready to
march away, and it was gray
uniforms instead of blue
that filled the streets.
My own boy was in one of the very
first companies. They had been drill
ling for weeks, with their mothers
and wives and sisters looking on, and
oh, war was so new to them, and they
looked handsome and brave as they
marched away, And then, after that,
regiment after regiment from Texas
passed through the Louisiana town
where we lived, and the women and
children lined the sidewalks and in
sorrowful silence watched the long, |
long lines as they marched by. Poor
fellows, so brave and cherry, with
their shouts tor the Southern women
and their song about "The Girl I Left
Behind Me,"-how many of them
ever came back, 1 wonder?
Mine never did. And when
see these drills and
the boys in their uniforms, it always
sets me thinking of the times when
the soldering was real and the battles
were real, and the whole land was
full of heartaches.n
Nv
One of the state papers said the
other day: "The boy with the bomb
under your carriage Is the same as the
man with the dynamite under your
house." There is food for reflection
iE this, isn't there? A great many
people who pass over boyish vices
VITA the excuse: ooh, boys will be
boys" are preparing great deal of
unhappineos for themselves after
awhile. Understand, there is consid-
cradle difference between mischief
which springs from super
abundance of boyish spirits, and
malicious meanness, which
finds its chief pleasure in the dis
comtiture of others. The boy who
throws bomb under a carriage
merely for the pleasure of making the
horse plunge or rear knows very we'll
that there may be more serious conse.
quences of his act. He knows that the
horse may be frightened into run
ming away, and may kill the persons
in the carriage or run over other
people in the street. Knowing this,
his piece of fun cannot be considered
mere piece of boyish mischief. 1t is
worse. 1t has a criminal element in
it. The same element, full grown,
tnrns men into fire bugs" into
highwaymen, into thugs and anarch-
lists. The question is, when is it time
to begin teaching your boys
to respect the rights of
other people? Will you wait
until they have taken long
course of such training? The lawless-
ness of society gets its first start in
the nursery, and is already pretty
we'll grown when the urchin in knick-
erbockers stretches wire across the
sidewalk for the fun of seeing people
stumble and fall, or places stones on
the track for the pleasure of seeing
people jolted, or does any one of the
thousand and one other THINGS which