The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-02-10
..ou We HYPoCRITEs..r

1t was Thursday afternoon. The sun
| was shining, but feebly. and the wind
blew bitterly cold Three women stood
around an old ''aunty,' on bleak and
deserted street corner. All We're cry
ing. The grouping was not less desc
late than was the picture pathetic. The
old colored woman was, it was said.
the cook and housekeeper for those
who stood there penniless appealing TO
her in tears and in distress. An agon
iZing wave of virtue had swept across
the conscious of some well-fed and
comfortably housed officials, and these
women of the town found themselves
out on the streets, hungry and PENN
less, and on such a day. Each stood
there in her despair. each q victim of
some man, and all, with maybe two
hundred others, on that particular day.
victims of the law of men enforced by
the orders of men. 1t was explained
that the orders came from men whom
these women all knew, men who, may
hap, had caresSed and blackmailed
them by turns, but men who had of
late seen the error of their ways and
turned to be new creatures. However,
this new life wave may have come to
these men, there was no benignity in
the way the result reached these poor,
defenceless victims of mans lust.
There was no ''brotherly" condonment,
nor "sisterly' consideration for these
-ha ND
cold corner, and who had been first
rendered unfit and then spurned by the
same hand. Ii God frowned upon the
situation in Wichita that day, we may
be sure that it was not upon that home
less group of despairing women. When
Christ said, Neither do l condemn
thee" he was not addressing himself
to hypocritical crowd of accusers,
but to its victim, a frail woman, whose
heipiessnesS touched His soul.
Thus the men whom God made strong
that he might protect her who, in her
weakness, confides in him becomes an
OppreSSor in the extremist sense, and
to a degree that in the absence Of such
gentle dependence would be impos-
Sible. The poor, frail, lost woman who
has been ruined through her trust in
man must not look to him for after
pity. much less for protection. Brutes
are kinder to their kind than is the
male minion of the law to the helpless,
defenseless, she, who is spurned by
society, is monthly taxed by the city
and afterwards robbed of her bread
through a rotten spaSm of newly
awakened brute virtue.
What the Christ, with bowed head,
wrote in the sands at his feet as he
stood listening to the bowling hypo-
critics who had taken the woman in the
act, is not recorded. The words We're
doubtless obliterated by the passing
wind as typical of the instability of
human enactments and human judg-
ments. But incessant woes tire the
heart and waste the life of these help
less victims of man, and the eternal
words of the infinitely compassionate
Christ stand confronting as undying
witnesses and scar the conscience of
the moral towards who, under the
cover of mere mems laws, would deny
4 fallen woman q chance for life, or
even shelter against the bitter storm for
these outraged and helpless ones, who,
if not as pure and beautiful as the
flower of summer, still give forth
human tears, still give out the frag-
rance of their womanhood while lying
crushed beneath the needless
heels of those less worthy them them !