Semi-weekly interior journal. [volume] (Stanford, Ky.) 1881-1905, 1893-06-09
VICES AND FOIBLES.
MRS. FRANK LESLIE CONTRASTS The
FAULTS OF THE SEXES.
Women Lack Tolerance; Men Lack Tact.
when Men Are Coarse, Women Become
spiteful--The Foible of sanctimonious-
ness and the vice of Careiessness.
tCopyright, 1893, by American Press Associa-
toni


of the daily prints lately. His state
ment was a broad one, but after all con-
veys a truth of which women may per-
haps be too proud.
They don't frequent barrooms and
similar resorts, to be sure, but then one
must remember they don't want to.
They do 90 to church q good deal, but
they take pleasure in doing it. Virtue
and vice are. after all, comparative terms,
and the temperament Of the individual
comes in to modify most decisions.
On one Of the occasions when helped
to swell the congregation of women at
church | heard what seemed to me q
most sensible and rational theory pro-
pounded by the preacher. He was talk
ing Of the judgment, and he said that
the Judge was not going, like an earthly
magistrate, to apply an iron law to every
case alike. but to consider each culprit's
temperament. opportunities and environ
ment. That seems to me plan that, il
it could be applied in mundane courts Of
80 called justice, would be productive Of
far happier results than can now be OBJ
tanned
Men. for instance. would not be so se-
verely judged for frequenting barrooms
as women would, and a fretful, suspi-
cious, ''nagging" woman would not be
punished for her flights of temper as q
man would be for similar conduct.
Each sex has its own class of faults,
and doubtless the temptation to those
faults ie far stronger in the class which
has sort of hereditary right to them
than in any other. They differ essential
ly, these faults Of men and women do,
and very often they clash all the more
on account of these differences. Mans
wrong tendencies run into vices more or
less coarse and degrading. while wom-
ans tend rather to foibles and faults
more or less narrow and contemplate.
In this matter of barrooms. for in
stance. almost every man thrown into
business and political relations with
other men. or who mingles freely with
other men of various classes. finds him.
self very often invited, almost compelled,
to drink something with them, and
suppose two-thirds of the men in Amer
lea are in the habit Of doing so. Just
why people should invite each other to
drink as a sign of good fellowship, or
honest intentions, or forgiveness, or
amity. is rather a puzzle, especially TO
the female mind. Why is the process
of deglutition a specially social one?
Why don't they invite each other to
wash their hands together, or comb
their hair. or blow their noses-in fact,
any Of the familiar functions men per
form all the time, just as they drink
when they are thirsty and eat when they
are hungry!
However. not to spend time in the
orizing, we grant the fact that men have
a habit Of drinking together, and down
town they resort to barrooms for that
purpose. am not writing temperance
lecture and do not say there is any wrong
in doing this. but do say that drunken
ness is a vice, and a very disgusting one,
and that q habitual drunkard is not
fit or indeed a possible companion for
any woman. The vice is one natural to
him as a man in our present condition of
civilization, especially in great cities, and
perhaps perfectly just and omniscient
Judge would not condemn him for it half
SO severely as the woman does who is
compelled to suffer from the effects of
vice which is no temptation to her and
which she cannot understand.
On the other hand, the woman has he,
foibles of temper, of selfishness, of jeal-
ousy. Of vanity, of precision and intol-
erance.
These qualities are not vices, unless
We call jealousy one, but they are capa-
BILE of making life intolerable to any one
compelled TO associate intimately with
the woman who possesses and develops
them.
A man under certain conditions of ex-
element and provocation is apt to become
coarse and brutal. He swears, he bangs
the furniture about, he tells his wife she
is a fool, or a liar, or a scold, and taunts
her with cruel insults. He visibly, to her
eyes if not TO his own, steps down from
his position rs man and gentleman and
becomes an object of scorn and loathing.
Now come in her foibles 10 fan the
fame his vices have kindled. She uses
her nimble tongue like lash, she MIN
les him, she looks at him, she wishes she
had kodak to tale his picture-in fact,
she arouses all that is worst in his nature
to a condition of frenzy, and after that
point anything is possible. He may
strike her; he may heap upon her insults
SO terrible that no penitence can ever
wash them away; he may even be SO
wrought upon by rage and that sense of
helplessness which assails a man when a
clever woman lets loose her tongue upon
him as to lay out his brute strength upon
her and lay her dead at his feet. Two
men or two women rarely If ever stir
each other TO such pitch Of irrespon-
sible wrath as an angry woman can
drive an angry man.
Or let US impartially reverse the case
One Of woman's foibles is love of ad-
miration and homage. She has beauty
and fascination of manner, and she likes
to see their power confessed. Her husband
is Jealous man and at the same time
Indifferent TO those claims in his wife