The age-herald., 1897-10-26

ately introduced by Mrs. M. B. Pi,cher of Nashville.
 Mrs. R. A. Ellis. formerly president of the Womans Press club of Georg.a, read paper of unusual interest, written by Miss Irma Dooly, of the Atlanta Consti- tuition, who was unavoidably detained at her home. Miss Marie Thlixton, of the Louisville Courier Journal. read a bright, sparkling paper, having for her subject. 'No Bloomers for Women Journalsts;' - Mrs. Marion Marlin, of the Chicago Correspondence" Miss Will Allen Drom- goole, who was accorded a very grati- flying ovation, contributed one of her inimitable stories, "A Wonderful Experi- child of her brilliant brain.
 Mrs. Ellzabsth M Gilmer Dorothy Dix), of the New Orleans Picayune, fol- lowed Miss Dromgoole with an address rbristling with wit and replete with mod ern philosophy Among other good things Mrs Gilmer said:
 Speaking for the southern newspaper women, am free to confsss that when she gets an hour off, and leisure to seri- ously consider the subject, she is divided between surprise at finding herself newspaper woman at all and amaz ment that she didn't do 1t long ago. You see. in the south, we are still very young in the cause. Twenty-Five years ago only the most advanced woman would have been bold enough to communicate with a newspaper even by the safe. long tance telephone method of occasional correspondence. Fifteen years ago wo- men sent in to the editor fiowery and adjective embroidered accounts of balls and partiss. Today we have seen that it is not good for man to be alone when he gets out paper, and are dividing the work and salary in every newspaper office in Dixie. It is a great charge to have come about in so short time, and it is small wonder that now and then some Rip Van Wrinkle wakes up and questions woman's fitness for journal ism, and her right to occupy the place she has.
 ''It is an idle and proftless discussion. This is an unsentimental age, and the daily paper is the most unsentimental. thing in it. If wornan occupies a good paying position as editor or paragraphst or reporter, the world may rest assured it is the result of fitness and ability and not of romance.
 'Tn reality, the conditions of life in this country are much more alike every where than we are accustomed to think, and the southern newapa per woman diff fers but little from her sisters of the press north or east or west. Everywhere women are spanking babies, and giving pink teas, and holding club meetings, and organizing charities, and it is along these lines of eternal feminine interest that newspaper women mostly work. Let no man deride this, or underrate the tall ent it requires to write up wedding and use enough adjec,ives to satisfy the bride and few enough not to call down the wrath of the managing editor, or to report club election where forty women talked at once and then went into cau- GUS and didn't know how they got in or how in the world to get out again.
 In good truth, nowhere do the real womanly virtues of patience, loyalty, fi- dslity and sympathy shine with bright CT lustre than in the newspaper woman. Give her a clew to a story and she will follow it up hill and down dale with the unerring scent of a sleuth-hound, and when she has found it she will s9l down calmly before your door and camp there until YOU tell her what she wants to know. Send woman to report a speech, and she will sit like patience on monu- msnt listening for hours while musty snvant dscourses of protoplasm in terms that are only intelligible to a technical dictionary. Every woman is by nature believes in her paper with passion of | loyalty Fond Of ta k ns as woman ! proverbially are si. weGld endure a 1 very .nquisition before she would give 1 away anything that promised scoop. | Whether her paper be the crossroads
 weekly or a metropolitan daily, she be- I lieves 1t to be the finest paper with the 1 biggest circulation on earth. What 1t
 advocates is her religion. and she would
 esteem it nothing short of sacrilege to 1 differ in politics from the side it espoused i To wonderful degree she sings her in 1 dividuality in fl, and rarely, If ever | uses her position to further ends of her l own or vent personal spite.
 | Somewhere in that great book where | the debt and credit account of earthly 1 deeds is kept there must be a very brigh' | page where the recording angel writes ! ithe name of the newspaper woman. Shs