The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1893-11-12
AND HER HOME,
| III
Tyrants With Sweet Faces, Soft
Voices. Eyes That Laugh,
Lips That Woo.
Their Tyranny Is Very Gentle,
But Withal Very Difficult
to Resist.
Mothsrs Capable of Heroic Sacrifices. Of
Marvellous self Dsnisis what They
Deuaaad IN Return.

All tyrants do not go about menacing
their victims with clubs and alarming them
with the clank Of chains and click Of the
bolt In the dungeon door. There are tyrants
with sweet faces and soft voices, with eyes
that laugh, and lips that WOO. and fingers
that caress. Their tyranny IL very gentle,
but withnl 1t is as difficult to resist ~ he
soft, steady, blankotlike pressure Of the
fog when It COMES stealing in from the sea
or creeping up from the valley. Who does
not know the tyranny that Is harder to
escape than any other. because 1t wears the
guise and uses the vocabulary of lover
Such despotism is sometimes exercised
by a wife, who, caring only for material ad-
vantage, stiles day by day and little by lit
tbs her husbands aspirations after better
things, who becomes, as Rosamond to Lyd-
gate, her husbands basil plant-a plant tra-
ditionally supposed to thrive on the brains
OF murdsred men. Pink and white tyran-
ny Mira. Stowe characterized this kind of
despotism. exercised by a beautiful, frivo-
IOus and selfish woman over a large hearted
and noble but in her hands bafIled and
helpless man.
This feetherweight tyranny is sometimes
found in a family where n or the other
parent refuses TO allow the growing young
people in the house the right to develop
along the lines nature intended and In
their own way. Who has not seen the
child in whom dweit no love and no apti-
tude for music compelled to waste years in
an endless. profitless strumming at a key
board, while another child whom art in
yited and solicited was condemned to
drudgery of another orders The man of
business who is resolved to make O bust
ness man Of his son, when the latter pre-
fers to be a sailor or a soldier; the profess
sional man who elects hat his boy shall
adopt his vocation, when art or landscape
gardening or mechanics are the boys avo-
cation-each Of these Is, through his very
love, exercising. a featherweight tyranny,
which may be crushing in its effects.
Women are, it must be admitted, more
prone to this defect than men. A woman's
methods are more subtle. She uses finesse.
Where a man goes crashing on with ak and
hammer, she puts aside an obstacle or in
terposes one with gentle eliberation. Hers
is the habit of featherweight tyranny rather
than his. It is like death to her sometimes,
the discovery that o0mes In due course of
events that her IONS and daughters have in
dependent ideas OF their own; that they,
not she, must work out their individual
problems.
The mother of this type is capable OF
heroic sacrifices, of marvellous self denials.
Of unstinted generosity, but she demands
In return the right to legislate. Her chill.
dren, to her thought, are never grown up.
They must adopt her standards, accept her
views-in everything. small and great, COZ
form to her measuring line. Naturally
they rebel, and then come troubles and
heartaches, for featherweight tyranny can
bear as heavily and hold it's own against
odds as stubbornly as any other tyranny in
this strange world.-Harper's Bazaar.