The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1893-12-20

an ne selects as VIE is not nearly so
disastrous as the corresponding failure
Of the woman to understand the man
before she commits her life TO his keep
ing. The sphinx gives to the one a
cruel blow of her honlilxe paw, but the
other she devours bodily, leaving but the
crushed semblance, the simulacrum as
the ancients used to say, of the bright
and hopeful creature who dared try to
answer her fatal riddle.
Say what you will of the equality of
the sexes and the ability of woman to
hold her own in the battle of life, the
fact remains that when and if a woman
Loses she loses a great deal more than
the man. woman plays for heavier
stakes than the man and is so reckless
in her game that she never pauses until
she has flung her all upon the board.
Take a case: A woman meets a man
who at once devotes himself to her. and
both by word and deed processes to
hold his life of no value except as
it may be devoted to her service.
Now no woman who lives is insensible
TO the delicate fiattery of such a profess
slon-no woman so strong or so self
reliant as not to be pleased and at
tracted by what seems the sincere and
thorough devotion of a man who is ad-
mired and sought by other women, and
Is able to hold his own among other men.
Even If she is happy and prosperous
ana surrounded by other friends a man
who so addresses her, or without any
spoken words so COMFORTS himself, Is
sure to win favorable place in her re-
gard; but If, alas, the woman is lonely
and tired and oppressed with the weight
of duties and obligations too heavy for
her strength, and which no one helps
her to carry, then If one Of these plaus-
ible and much protesting men comes
along and in every look and motion and
act says: oh, how / long to help you
and to comfort you and TO take all that
hon
listens. raises her eyes to heaven in
thanksgiving for such unlocked for
succor and gladly. yes, eagerly, gives
herself and all she has and all she hopes
and fears and loves into his hands. She
throws her entire fortune upon the table.
She stakes body SOUL mind, the mem
cries OF the past and hopes of the future
upon this single turn of the wheel. She
eXclaims to listening Fate: 81 have
solved your riddlel 1 have found the
answer to your conundrum of life! I
have at last met with the answer to
your terrible enigma Fatew
They marry, for the cruel game is not
made absolute until this bond is riv-
eted. While woman is bethrothed her
good angel may possibly come to the
rescue and give her some warning by
which she may escape with no more
than a heavy blow and an undying scar,
but when once she is married there is
but one door Of escape besides death,
and it is a question which is the more
cruel.
Few men. whatever may be their dis
position, are the same after marriage
that they are before. In the very best
specimen Of the sex there is a perhaps
unconscious desire and effort to appear
better than he really is during the
period of cOurtship He exercises a per-
petual restraint upon the coarser and
more violent traits Of his nature. He
sacrifices his convenience, his comfort,
his tastes and inclinations to those of
the object of his pursuit
He likes to walk and she prefers driv-
ing; he drives He loves to be out OF
doors, she prefers a shaded parlOr; he
sits in the parlOr. He dOteS upon ath-
letics and she likes to hear poetry; he
reads poetry, and so on. 1 do not say
that the girl or woman is right to &C
cept or exact all this self-sacrifice. I
will, indeed. allow that she is apt to
become selfish, and perhaps unreasona-
bic, but at this period of the game she
is blindfolded, both by fate and by the
man, who never once speaks candidly
and honestly to her, but is always in
sisting that her wishes are dearer to him
than his own, and that to do what he
doesn't like to do and give up all that
he does like is precisely what he en-
joys and wishes.
The woman believes him and accepts
the role Of despot, which is thus forced
upon her, and she wonders that she is
not even mistress of her own life, can
not arrange her hours, or her pI rsuits,
or the dainty environments of her home
as she has always done heretofore. She
thought to find shelter in a tower of
strength, and she finds herself captive
in a squalid and hateful prison, while
he who was TO have been her devoted
knight and preuX cnevalier becomes at
once her jailer and her fellow captive
All this because, poor woman, she
failed to correctly guess the riddle pro-
pounded to her by that unknown rowe
which we call nature or fate, or by
way of parable, the sphinx. The riddle
of human character, Did anybody ever
fully solve it? Many of us have tried
Viction that we have succeeded? For
even at the last-even after the man
whom we at first considered has dis
covered that he has not married the
woman he supposed, and after, in the
latter case, the woman has found out
her own woeful mistake-can we set it
down as certain that either one of them
finally reads the others character
Alright?
1 firmly believe not. At 1rst each
saw virtues that either were too even
escent or too much matter CT pretense
to be of any lasting service, and when
these had vanished. each discovered
faults and disagreeables and perhaps
vices that seemed to comprise the
whole character, but after all, does not
truth lie in the middle here, as in most
other cases? Neither man nor woman is
quite as good as we at first imagined or
quite as bad as we afterward concluded
in fact, we never quite understand
from first to last; we never get the true
answer TO the conundrum.
The sphinx has the best of it every
time. MRS. FRANK LESLIE.