The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1899-02-26
Is There Such a Thing
As a Contented Woman

a bright woman sums up the matter thus:
Is there such "a thing as a contented wo-
man any more? / can't find any. Every
little boarding school girl you meet has
aspirations. She wants to "be some
thing" One caught me on an elevated
train one day.
I'm writing my spring essay" she said
ITS on Ambition. l keep urging every
one to be something Isn't it grand to be
something? >"
1t depends on what the something is"
said land know that girl hates me for
life.
L had a letter from a California women
the other day. She is newspaper woman.
She has worked hard and made place for
herself In the city where she lives. She has
a home there and friends, and il she died
some one would come and put knot of
flowers in her hand and say something
kind about her to those who loved her.
-Shes earning good living She has
plenty of good clothes and enough to eat,
and she is putting money in the bank every
week; but she wants to 'be something"
So she's coming to New York, to live in
hall bedroom and work among strangers
and live with people who would not turn
their hands over to help her If she were
dying. There's another girl know. She's
an artist. She really can do things clever
things and worth the doing She has a
Her parents well to do, and she is the
idol of her little circle.
She quarreled with her people and left
her home and she's coming to New York ,
to be something"
The something that she will be is a hard
worked half-starved sheart-sick embitter-
ed woman, with a dozen enemies made for
every success she achieves
Another girl l know has a good home,
too, and good mother and doting father
She's seen Mrs. Leslie Carter in "Zaza''-
and so she's going to leave home and come
to New York and "be something" Her
something" will be playing small parts
with fy-by-night No. road company.
She will spend half her life in cold rail-
way stations, a quarter of 1t on the train
and few ecstatic minutes in provincial
theater, telling spiteful leading lady that
the carriage waits. There's another wo-
man-quite queenly she is, with a husband.
She's musical. So she's left the husband
down south on the beautiful plantation
with the yellow old Mississippi rushing by
the great trees at her very doorstep-and
she's come to New York to .be something"
in the musical line. She says that she and
her husband are devoted to each other out
that he appreciates her art and wants to
encourage her. l almost asked her who
the other woman was who had talked the
husband around to this amiable state of
mind but / refrained. Death is a gentle
disillusion and the awful heart-sinking
that comes when the fine veil which makes
the world place of enchantment to every
young woman worth worrying over is torn
away. Sometimes a girl who gets dlscon-
tented and who "yearns after higher life'
needs nothing in the world but good, Wig
orous struggle for any kind of life at all
to bring her to her senses
If L had a young sister who 'rebelled
against being at home, and who felt herself
misunderstood by her entire family, Ia
pack her little trunk and send her straight
TO New York boarding house, but-heres
the point of the whole thing-Pd make her
pay her own board.
When she found what fun 1t was to earn
few vulgar dollars-all by herself-she
would wake up to the fact that some Oh the
misunderstanding she thought so much
about was on her side.
| There is a perfect army of $40 week
women in New York. They are the re
mittance women of America.
/ They pinch and scrape along and manage
to look decently respectable at the sacrihce
OF health and comfort and everything else
worth living for.
They haven't the incentive of necessity;
they do not get the bracing effect of real
struggle which while it -hardens, certainly
does develop.
They live on and on, hoping and aspiring,
and being-nothing They lead useless,
selfish, lonely, unnatural lVes, conipareu
with which the existence of a Kitchen gnu
on a farm Is uplifted and broadened
All the better things OF life, all the sac
| rifices which love makes, all the unsell-
ishness which comes of real affectlon all
the haDpiness which crowds a natural
woman's life, they give up for what?
For a cave of silver-which ninety-nine
out of one hundred of them never ma at
ALL
And the one-hundredth one who does ma
ii discovers at the same time that silver
has deppeciated in value, until her whole
cayeful will not buy her soles for the poor
little shoes she has worn out trying to
find it.