The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1893-12-28
A WIPES VERY FRANK CONFESSION
Rapid Growth Of Clubs n sixniti.
cant Fact-Sacrifices of Equai-
Rights women for the Elective
Fra nchtse.
Written for THE HERALD.

We have chess-clubs, and jockey-clubs,
and yacht-clubs, and ball clubs, and lit
ersry-clubs and socialclubs, and dear
knows what all in the way of social blud-
geons, with which to knock the breath
and the very life out OF all true domestic
experience.
Now this rapid growth OF clubs is a
veIy significant fact In the present ext.
gency.
II is a symptom. 1t is also a cause and
an effect.
When women. driven by neglect, har-
rowhd by snxieties and made almost
desperate by their unequal state, are
taking up the wall of oppression and
seeking the elective franchise, the men
themselves are running still further out
OF ear'shot of these sad cries and hard
ening themselves in isolation from do
mestic life.
We do net propose to launch forth
jeremaid against those "brutes OF men,"
for we think there are other successful
candidates for shares in this concern Of
responsibility.
Up and down the land there is call
for consideration upon this matter. For
not few years we have seen something
of the effect Of this banding in society
and circles, from which the best part OF
creation is excluded.
We have visited house after house in
the pastoral round, taking the evening,
that so be, we might catch the men but
the domestic Preside was as destitute of
men as if some invasion by an enemy
had called out all the available manhood
From boarding house or domestic hearth
it is much alike. Tea over. the cigar is
lighted, and away they 60.
Undoubtedly it is a symptom, and a
very suggestive one at that. 1t points to
a decay Of domestic-a weakening of
domestic ties an undermining of the
family anatomy. ~
1t points to morbid appetites in place
of quiet affections and tastes it indicates
unnatural excitements and stimulants, in
lieu Of healthful sentiments andysafe So
ciety.
This mans craving of mems society
points, too, to greater or less surrender
Of their attractions by the queen of the
domestic circle. In many q household
the women are abdicating the sphere of
woman's influence. The evil begins
very early. Brothers move in state OF
separation from their sisters; and the
evil is not corrected by the parents. a
sort of cold influence, isolation, or posi-
tive antagonism grows up between the
sexes in household. There is not only
no sympathy, and no mutual confidence,
but a studied avoidance OF each other s
society. The young men rush ont of the
house, or escape to their own rooms with
their own society and cigars; and the
ladies flee to their own quarters; and
the circle which should remain smooth,
sweet, and unbroken, becomes shattered
and fragmentary; and shattered conf
dence pierces the heart, transforms faith
into mistrust, and changes love into dis
content.
Now, as rule, those who are cold and
neglected. brothers, will not make warm
and devoted husbands, even if they care
to marry at all. But by law of our
nature and unnatural craving, which is
INDUCED, is sure to first undermine and
then supplant natural and normal taste
or affection. And the law applies pow
erfully here.
1t is an abnormal state for men to seek
the society of men, to the exclusion of
women. Men with men in business all
day, and then men with men in society
all evening, argues, on the very surface,
a bad state Of feeling, and plainly contra
venes the Creators intentions. The re-
suits cannot be healthful to the true in
terests of the family and society. The
men, at their clubs, have their games
and their special topics, their cigars and
their wine, and this sort of life, by the
rule of the unnatural craving, tends, with
too much sad success, to blot out all the
healthful longings for domestic life.
And the women. on the other hand,
with their pinched-up lives, are helping,
all too rapidly, to build the walls of these
horrible club.houses." The air and at
mosphere of our average fashionable
young ladies is anything but wholesome
and inspiring to the masculine frame. If
one is not shocked outright by the exhal-
atoms of some oppressive perfume, he is
conscious of a sickly air OF some sort as
he approaches many of the girls of the
period" How much is genuine; how
much is artificial; it would be hard in
deed to say. To solve the difficulty he
would have to cross-question the hair
dresser, the milliner, the painter, and
sundry other artists (perhaps the physi-
clan, too,) whose skill and cunning are
concerned in the general make up-the
"tout ensemble"-of the lady in question.
Now, we respectfully ask whether,
when this becomes the prevailing style,
and every woman in the so-called refined
walks appears as an invalid and senti-
mental dreamer to every man, whether
she is not doing, with might and main,
all she can to build the walls of more OF
those "horrid club houses?'' Those
houses which, all too core tly, she looks
upon as rivals TO her affections, and as
the ssssssins to VII her hopes