The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-04-28
WOMAN'S
WORLD.

WONLDs
1t seems likely that women always over
valued the effectiveness of tears. Tears
were supposed to always be an unanswer-
able argument so far as men were con-
cerned. Unfortunately, few women can
weep effectively. In poetry pearly drop,
that makes a blue eye look like violet
drowned in dew, gathers slowly and rolls
gently down the alabaster cheek, and the
man goes down before it. In everyday
life the woman who weeps gets red-eyed'
and her nose swells, and she looks purple
and apopleptic, and the man gets up,
slams the door behind him and goes down
town until the waterspout is over. In
these prosaic and common-sense days
weeping has played out as a fascination,
and tears are a failure. No man wants
10 be salted down in brine as If he were
dried herring.
Tears were always a towards weapon.
1t was playing upon the best and tender
est in other people for your own selfish
ends. heard a woman say not long ago,
says Dorothy Dix in the New Orleans
Picayune, that she always got her way IN
she family by crying. when 1 want a
thing" she said, II just go to bed and
have Mysteries until ! get It," One I'M
derstands, of course, how man gives in
to that kind of woman-his very man
hood makes him powerless to deal with
her as she deserves, but what whitening
and blighting contempt he must have for
har he the LITTLE soul
that trades on his pity, his Chivalry, his
very reverence for womanhood.
In an humble rank of society l have
seen that kind of a woman permanently
and instantaneously cured by sound
ahrashine, and when 1 have observed
other hysterical and unreasonable women
an a more exalted station of life. it has
occurred to me that perhaps we are I'M
duly prejudiced against wife-beatinS, and
that there may be times and occasions
when it makes for peace and righteous
ness.
The trouble with womens tears in the
past has been that they wept too much,
and in the wrong way. A tear as tear Is
as ineffective as any other drop of salt
water, yet people make the mistake OF
reverencing ie as if weeping over a thing
was going to perform some kind of
miracle You might weep over a starry
ing family until you shed an ocean of
tears, yet il wouldn't keep them from
perishing of hunger. 1t is only when
you begin to sob with your pocketbook
that you do any good 1t isn't the peo-
pie who come to weep with us when we
are unfortunate and poor and downcast
who help us. Ii is those who have learned
TO sympathize with their bank book and
personal interest and assistance Moth
ing else on earth is so plentiful and cheap
and colo hui r1,.xr
backed up with good deeds and money
nobody has a right to attempt to sustain
a reputation for charity on them. Plenty
OF people do. | have seen women sit up
in fashionable church and sniffle into a
point lace handkerchief all through a
charity sermon, and then drop a plugged
nickle into the contribution plate.
Then there's poverty. IF all the tears
~emen- have shed--sver being. poor had
been brought 10 account il would make
water power that would turn the wheels
of the machinery of the world. AID it's
all been wasted. Tears toll back no van
ished dollars Nobody ever heard of a
woman lamenting herself into a fortune.
yet they go on making themselves perfect
Niobes over their split milk I had a
friend once who lost her money. and who
thereafter did nothing but weep What
shall / do?' she demanded. II shall
starve IF you would put in as much
time and energy hopping floor as you
do in hopping your eyes you could make
a fortune as a charwoman," 1 answered,
brutally She never forgave me. People
never do when you tell them the truth
but it is a fact, nevertheless. that the
only tears that can conjure back pros
perity are the tears we weep with our
hands at some good, honest labor.
Sometimes 1 amuse myself by specuat-
ing on what the state of affairs would be
81 mothers wept less over their maynard
children, and spanked more. Every wo-
man speaks OF her children when they
turn out badly, as a mysterious dispersal
tion of Providence. It's a sneaky way Of
trying to get out of her responsibility
She has been too weak, or too selfish
or too lazy to raise them right. Then the
day comes when she discovers that the
girl is meeting fast young men on the
sly, or the boy comes home staggering
drunk. 1t is one of the tragedies of life
when the young lives are dearer than
her own, and the young souls that she
would give her own to save hang trem-
bling in the balance, and the mother can
meet the situation with nothing but i'm
potent tears.
Sentimentalsts have embalmed a moth
er'e tears in song and story, and made
them sacred, but l tell you the tears a
mother sheds over an ill-raised son or
daughter are shameful. There should be
no cause for them. and there would be no
cause for them once in a million times
if she had done her duty. When 1 hear
of heart-broken mother trying to float
her son out of the penitentiary on a
stream of tears, / don't pity her half so
much as / pity him for having his life
wrecked by an injudicious mother. In
strict Justice, the mother ought to be
indicted as an accomplish before the
crime. Weep with strict authority, moth
ers, sob with a switch while your chfi-
dren are little, and when they are grown
you will not have TO shed salt and bitter
tears over sons and daughters who have
brought shame upon you.
The genuinely tactful married woman
of the present day. says the Washington
Post, doesn't portray her husbands short
comings to him in direct manner. She
tells il all to the baby. when he is sitting
I'm the same room. The way this scheme
works was illustrated in happy little
$3.50 per month home on Capitol hill the
other evening. The man and his wife had
had few words. He was sitting by the
front window reading, the paper. and she
was goo-goo-ing 90 the baby in her lap.
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