The Florence tribune., 1897-10-09
WOMEN AS A RAUs.
They Have a Different Line of Prog
 ress from Men.

They Have a Different Line of Prog ress from Men.
 All women have fathers as well as mothers. That is fact of natural his- tory which we do not suppose the most advanced of the crowds who are now
 writing about women and their prog
 ress are prepared definitely to deny, but they would certainly like to deny it if they could. The assumption which underlies all their views is that women
 are not only different from men physic- ally, intellectually and morally, but
 that they belong to a different race,
 which may, as time advances, have a
 destiny of it's own. They write as if the
 great Hindu legists, who hold that fe- male property should descend only to
 females, had perceived part of a great
 truth, which is, that women are con
 tinuously separate from men, inherit
 nothing from them, and are forever advancing upon line of their own
 which will in the end, or at all events may in the end, after what Mrs. Green calls an anarchic period, develop in
 them something probably superior to anything in mem or at the worst, something radically different.
 The human race with these writers is
 male, but women are female, and there fore something quite other than hu- man. Their strength and their weak ness, their virtues and their failings, belong to themselves, and no more be- long to common humanity than the qualities of cattle md the qualities of
 the felidae belong 10 q common animal nature. They have a different line as well as q different law of progress, and will in the end develop into beings en- tirely separate from men, probably
 much higher, but at all events so diff ferent that to reason from the progress of one sex tc the progress of the other is as futile as to reason that because wolves have in the course of unnum- bered ages developed into dogs, there fore cats must in the course of count less aeons develop into dogs also. In the violence of their reeoil from the Tennysonian idea that woman is but lesser man, the more fanatic writers att tribute to her qualities; faculties, and, above all, future fate which would. if ,their assumption were true, prove her to belong to an essentially different species, which resembles man only for a moment when, as it were accidentally, she is level with him in a race in which she is destined to be far the first. The fact that, as all men are the sons of women, they must share in any inher- tied excellence, or even change, which their mothers may develop is not so much denied as ignored, and the whole question treated as if all men were the descendants of Adam dall women of Eve, not by license of poetic speech, but in prosaic fact.-London Spectator "Will you oblige me by .holding this ram while I open this gate? It is fas- tened on the inside, and I find that I must climb over." Such was the remark
 made by man standing at a gate il4 a lonely road, and it was addressed to
 a stalwart sailor who had just come up.
 The only other object visible on the llong, straight road was the large ram. 1 whose massive, crooked horns were be- ing held by the man as the two stcoS quite still in front of the gate 'sWhY
 sartinly, shipnate,s sand the obliginq
 tar, as he seized the big horns. q thank you" the first holder said, when
 he got to the other side. You will nc. doubt be surprised to hear that never
 saw that ram until to-day. The vicious
 brute attacked me about half an hour
 ago, and we have been tussling together
 ever since. As long as you stand before
 nm, holding his horns firmly, he can't
 hurt you. Good-by. I hope you will
 De as lucky in getting away from him
 as have been. Odds and Ends.
 Indian silks run all the others band
 but the lighter and more graceful oual-
 ities require taffeta lining, which adds
 to the expense.