The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-06-03

ability to fall in love with a sibylline
hysteria and to become spoony over
the divine dissatisfaction, it is doubtful
BILE, can altogether supersede Dodo.
If man is criminally reckless IN
marrying a brainleSs jade who delights
him, it is equally possible that he Is
recreant to his higher duties in marry
ing an exemplary philosopher who Will
make him Wretched.
Angels, so far as we know, do not
make good wives for the present gen
Grafton of men This need not be a
mere physiologic conclusion. 1t may
rest on incompatibility of temperament
The angels must give entirely too
much time to the care of their wings.
Ideala's own account of herself is that
she is one of the weary women OF the
century. mo other age could have
produced me-"
she was born with a monstrous scorn
for the dead level of mediocrity. She
began to ask herself at eighteen now
she stood with regard to the ages that
had gone before" Her sleep was dis
turbed by lifting burdens from the
oppressed" and it is plainly to be seen
that many of the plain sailing duties
of rnediocrity were neglected IN order
that she might defend the aostract
weak against the abstract strong. Ii
was impossible for her to even contem-
plate exigent domestic affairs because
she was always regarding great meas
ures,'' even when she should have peen
supervising the soup. :,
Nine. Grand appears to think that all
this betokens a great superiority, Out
taken strictly with reference TO
special contract made with husband,
it is difficult to see either the practl-
cality or the sense of it. One VINO
undertakes to do a particular thing IN
life seldom wins honor in the task by
showing how well fitted he is to DO
some other thing; and it may as well
be said that any one who begins lie
by being weary of it is pretty sure to
end by making somebody else disguised
with it.
BOUND TO BE HEARD.
Ideala is like one of those clairvoy-
ant resonatorS who speak at Seance
meetings and reverberate all the ideas
that are at cross purposes in the air.
Given a listener anywhere, and she be-
comes a lecturer on the instant. You
perceive at once that to lecture lis her
gait" and to generaliZe is her destiny
When there is no listener she is mar
tyr, crushed and silent, to whom Nine.
Grand's heart goes out in infinite pity.
That we are to have these little Cole
ridges and DR.. Johnsons issuing from
the cradle in the near future, the PEN
sive barriers of the world, is undoubt-
edly the authors firm belief, and it is
enough for her to dwell upon the dis
cursive Ioquacity of her ideal with a
firm conviction that the perfect woman
is a disembodied and highly irrelevant
conscience, with no other Womanly at
tribute than a tongue.
But it is a sufficient answer to this
thesis to say of Ideala that it is by her
acts that we must judge her, and not
by her remarks" And here we wish
that the author had allowed US to see a
little of the enc phase Of Ideala's life
which would have determined her rela-
tivity
The young woman who at eighteen
knows Plato backward and can adjust
any railroad traveller to the trend of
spirituality, marries a brute at twenty,
who knocks her down. 1t is instantly
apparent that Plato and spirituality are
no guarantees of the common sense
that is essential in terrestrial affairs.
We should like to hear the husband S
side of this story It is very beastly,
no doubt, to knock his wife down, but
no one who listens long to Ideala can
fail to see that there may be mitiga ting
circumstances.
If there is anything in this world that
is calculated to eXasperaJte the untu-
tored, masculine nature, it is the dire
discovery that he has married a fog
bank instead of a woman, and it is
permissible to believe that even the
untutored masculine nature preserves
some dim consciousness OF having been
first defrauded and then despoiled To
find ones self fastened to a superiority
that announces, a. priori, at the very
start, that mans reverence for the
purity of woman is a sham" is dis
couraging to an ordinary husband. 1t
it too sweeping to win individual re-
spect.
To be told by a wife in everlasting
pandects that she loves you with a
great .reproach, purified from all
worldly dross, is not, from a point of
view of domesticity, very comfortable;
and the enmeshed brute, hunted
through all the labyrinths of prosiac
existence by a phantom abstraction
that evadeS him in a primal superiority
when, like Shylock, he is only asking
for his bond, sooner or later takes to his
original brute strength, where alone he
is superior.
THE HEROINES COMPARED.
1t is a popularity of the Dodos that
no sooner do they marry one man than
they begin to discover that they love
another. 1t was Nine. Grand's oppor-
tunity to show that the woman's wo-
man did not do that But she has not