The Van Buren press. [volume] (Van Buren, Ark.) 1859-1914, 1897-04-24
BILL ARP AT WORK.
Complaints Of the Grip and Rheu-
matism Do No Good.
His wife Keeps Him GOing-CIears
the Veranda of Dead Vines, and
Eliminates on Wom-
ans Rights.

my wife likes IOf me TO WORK Wnen Sne
feels like it, and SO between the two l
have to work nearly all the time. Yes
terday | was granting around with
rheumatism, but she took notion that
it was a good day to take the veranda
trellis down and clean away all the old
dead Vines, and thought it would help
me to get warmed up by exercse-and
it did. She knows-she has heard me
try to play off on grippe and rheumatics
5efore-you can't fool the woman you
| got The ladder and climbed up to the
top and cut away the tangled web and
trimmed the running rosevines and the
wisteria and Virginia creeper and then
tore away the old canes and cleaned up
all the trash and buried it. twas big
job, for the veranda is 90 feet long and
l had to move the old riclScty ladder a
dozen times-several times | get sorter
dizzy and liked to have fallen, but my
folks don't believe l am as old as l am,
md they never will believe it until
break my arm, or my leg, or my neck.
Then | reckon they will be sorry. A
man never grows old to his own family;
no man is a hero to his own servant.
The servant knows him too well, and
just so my wife won't admit that / am
too old to be useful, and she keeps me
trotting around. She gives me precepts
and examples, for she is never idle
makes up the bed, cleans up her room,
puts out the washing and distributes it
when it comes in, meuds my clothes,
darns my stockings, sews on the miss
ing buttons, hides my best pants to
keep me from working in them, and
scolds me ever and anon about my care
lessness. She keeps on making little
garments for the grandchildren and
still finds time to boss me in the flower
garden and go 10 the missionary meet
ing, and writes letters to the boys. She
never reads until almost bedtime, but
next morning can tell us all the news
worth knowing, and has her opinions
about Cleveland and Mckinley and Ly-
man Abbott and DR.. Broughton and
female suffrage. I read to her the re-
CtII NOlt III pal ttDOut tlldo uIt
asked her what she thought of it..
"Well," said she, 81 don't care to vote,
CT course l don't, but il female suffrage
will lessen female SUFFRAGE l hope it
will pass. 1t makes my heart bleed to
read about these heartless men deceiv-
ing and betraying foolish young girls
who trusted them-what pitiful scene
it was-that ruined girl following that
man and his bride into the parlor cars
in Atlanta, and in her presence up
braiding him with his infamy. And
just look around all over this country
at the young married women who have
been abandoned by their unprincipled
husbands, and now have to work and
toll and almost beg for living for
themselves and their little ones. If
jury of women could try these deceivers
and these faithless husbands they
would be sent to the changing, where
they belong. If a young man embez-
zles some rich mans money and runs
away, the judge and the grand jury
and the newspaper make an awful fuss
about it and send kilograms all over
the country to catch him, but If he ruins
woman and breaks her heart and
makes wreck of her life it is hushed
up and nothing is done. l am not a
woman 's-rights woman. She has
rights enough, but there ought to be
some way of avenging her wrongs"
That is fact, and my opinion is that
her wrongs never will be avenged until
she is not only empowered to vote, but
also to hold office in schoolrooms and in
the government of the towns and vii
lagos. The age of gallantry and chival-
ry towards woman has passed. This
is the unfeeling age, and woman has to
shift for herself. Thirty years ago she
worked at II occupations, and now at
100, and gets about half price for her
labor-half the price that the men get
who do it no better. l am ashamed OF
my sex, and l never buy a shirt for 80
cents but what remember that poor
woman made it-made it in some gar
ret-worked all day and part of the
night,
"With fingers weary and worn
With eyelids heavy and red"
And yet these lords of creation pre-
tend that if woman is allowed to vote
she will get down in the slums and lose
her purity She is down in the slums
now and would get out il she could.
know women who are at work for less
than a dollar a day and have to support
4harnSa1vaS opd tbair Ii4fIa ob;tdra,, ont
of it, while their rich employers sit high
mp in the churches and say amen and
amen to the preachers prayers. know
women, good women, accomplished
women, whom men have ruined by neg
lect or abandonment, and all they can
amen to the preachers prayers. know
women whose unprincipled husbands
have been breaking their marriage
VOWS ever since they made them, and
still they pass and repass in the com
munity as gentlemen. But this is the
same old story-who cares!
Now II is said that although the wom-
ans suffrage bill has passed the house
of commons by large majority, it will
be ANONYMOUSLY killed in the house Of
lords-why l should like to know? The
lords are not a senate whose age and
dignity might correct hasty or unwise
legislation, but they are a pampercd
purse-proud nobility. The most Of
thea are and many of them have as
many wives as Brigham Young ever did.
But the time is near at hand when wom-
an will be enfranchised in more ways
than one. The laws OF marriage and
divorce are better IN England now than
ours. They are governed by the
church-by the ecclesiastical courts