The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-07-16
ONE OF sIMoN,s "THREArs."
1t Is No Wonder Nobody Was at All
Alarmed BY 1t.

AIarnaeu by H.
Jules Simon spent much of a long life
in the generally futile act of the threat.
1t would be unjust to say that he used
nenaces as a. mere habit. and no one
can aver that he used them without
conviction. But he was not, in his
most vigorous time a man strong
enough for the function and office of
a prophet. He was apt to have instant
recourse to a warning whenever he
was disappointed in his fellow-citizens,
or when the course of things contra
dicted his hopes and faith He was, in
fact, subject to the temptation of the
ease with which a public can be warn
ed. He spoke to it seriously; he told
it what was in store; he wrote little
stories to convey the warnings and
carry the threat. Did they ever fright
en- a mouse?
And yet they were no slight calami-
ties that he prattled of in the weekly
press to those who might be supposed
to prefer the form of fiction. Take, for
instance, one of the last stories he
wrote. 1t was written to warn France
and the rash world against the over
education of women: and, in spite of
the gentleness and tolerance of the
authors temper, no one can say that
its meDaceS were few, or mild, or in
any way moderate. On the contrary,
they were calculated to strike dismay.
His heroine finds that she manages
the grocers and the butchers books,
and the housekeeping generally, with
so much ease and so good a system
that she might well go on to the at
tractive study of finance and public
economy. She reads law also, and her
husband-a professional man-fnds her
t industry OF use to nim.
| In time she educateS her only daugh-
ter In this question the father has
nlisgivings; a daughter is a, serious re-
sponsibiliJy. Shall she be saddled with
a brevet d'institutrlce, according to her
mothers project of work and examina-
tons? And if so, will the fathers and
mothers of young men like it or not?
What result, in a word, will a studi-
Gus giTlhood have upon the treaties
for the maiden's marriage?
| The w1fe has her way. She guards
her daughter with every care, goes
with her, of course, to- every lecture
and presents her to society with every
confidence in a happy issue. None the
less disasters surprise the little family
Their daughter is refused, their alli-
ance declined there where everything
had seemed most suspicious. The
mother can guess no reason; the father
hears Whispers in the world. His wife
is considered advanced blue" ac-
cording 10 the island wit of our ear
Her century; an Amazon" according
to the contemporary, but longer-lasting,
phrase of France. This is why the
proposal of marriage failed. In all this
it is not the dear world but the woman
who is obviously so wrong.
What follows is tragic without re-
lief. The husband, though he had had,
/ throughout, the wisest of misgivings,
takes upon himself the vindication of
his wife. Those who have called her
advanced shall answer it to himself.
In the ensuing duel it is he who falls,
not the husband of the lady who had
said advanced" or Amazon,
Such are the caprices of fortune. 1t
is not merely that you cannot count
upon the right husbands being the
better swordsman, but also that fate
| juggles with your sympathies. Who
shall say that the husband of the wo-
man who said Amazon" was not more
| in the right and more entitled to be
/ the better swordsman than the hus-
band of her who had hampered her
only daughter with a brevet d'insti-
| tutrice? It is a doubt of this kind that
! is SO painful, M. Jules Simon seemed
to feel and that mars your sense of
the symmetry of life.
| The wound is mortal, and the man
| is carried home to his wife to die. She,
when it is too late, sees all the error
of her career. and the justice of retri-
! button A broken heart, the conscious
ness that she has been the cause of
! her husbands death, and the unmarried
condition of her daughter, are none
| too much chastisement, she seems to
confess. for what she has done. And
yet chastisement is hardly the word
purely punitive. Her life is over
Her last words are words of warn
ing, not to the mothers of sons; not to
the world of lawyers and stockholders,
the exceedingly silly society-if Jules
Simon has not belied it-that cut her
off, with her daughter, for such a rea-
son; not to the duelists, though any or
all of these might have possibly been
mistaken by a plain reader in good
faith for the culprits of the little story
and the right recipients of it's last re-
proaches. No; the ultimate reproof
is for herself, and the ultimate warning
for her daughter. ooh, see, my child"
she cries, ''be advised. Remain a wo-
man. And this is obviously what
the author says, too.
! 1t might be unfair, perhaps, to take
this as a specimen even of Jules 81
mons smaller literary work Fiction
was perhaps not his strong point; but
| it would be hard to find a better speci-
men of the work of the professional
] threatener.-Pan Mall GazcttA