The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-07-14
WOMAN'S
WORLD.

believe that wife should be, in the
fullest possible sense. her husbands part
ner, and that. when it is necessary. there
is no limit to the work, the economies and
the self-sacrifces she ought TO share with
him, but when she has done it, she is en-
titled to a fair share in the perquisites.
Whenever women are granted independ-
ence-when the wife and daughter have
their own bank account. no matter how
small, and liberty to spend it as they
please-we shall hear no more of the I'M
rest Of womankind and of discomfort with
the domestic sphere. There is no other
work so easy as housekeeping, and wo-
men are not fools. They know a good
thing when they see IT, but no job that
merely pays board and clothes, and In
wolves a fight over the clothes, Is at
tractive. No man would take it, even If
the clothes were as gorgeous as Gen.
Miles full dress uniform, and he had
seven-course dinner every night, and 1T
is folly to expect women to be SATISFIED
with it, That is one side of the question.
No one can deny, however, that there are
plenty of women who have been bitten by
the prevalent career craze, and who are
anxious to leave the home nest and try
their foolish wings in the great world. My
advice, every time. would be to let them
do it. There is nothing else on earth SO
wholesome, and so Christening, and so
convincing, as humping right hard into
the actualities of life.
Every stage-struck girl in the world be-
lieves that when managers see her they
will fall over each other in their efforts
to secure her to play Juliet. Every girl
who wants to write for the newspapers
thinks she will receive check for thou
sand dollars by return mail for her poem
on spring. Every callow maiden who
paints an object that her friends recog-
nize, without being told, as a COW, ex-
poets to have her picture hung on the line
in the salon the first year.
Let her go and try her strength. Let
the stage manager call her dummy and
tell her she doesn't know enough to walk
across the stage. Let cruel city editor
call her cherished effusion rot" and cast
It in the waste basket Let the art teach
er inform her that she doesn't know the
first thing about even how to see things
let alone draw them, and my word for f.
IL she has a good home, she will take the
first train for 1t, and you will never hear
anything more about careers from her.
And that reminds me, says Dorothy Dix
In the New Orleans Picayune. OF a little
romance in which 1 have had the pleas
ure of assisting, in a way. out in a West
ern city there is a certain worthy gem
tieman, whom we win call Mr.. Blank and
who possesses a charming and lovely
young daughter. Mr.. Blank has thrlven in
the grocery line and, like q good Ameri-
can parent, he lavished his substance on
his daughter. He sent her-her name is
Mary Ellen-to a big Eastern school,
where she acquired, among other things,
the belief that she was destined to be
second Rosa Bonheur.
Last year Mary Ellen graduated and
went back home, but, to her fathers con-
sternation, she announced that she pro-
posed devoting her life to that art that
spells itself with big A, and that in the
fall she intended going to New York,
where she would study for a few wears
before going abroad to the French stu
dos.
MIR. Blank pished and pshawed II
wasn't at all what he had planned. He
wanted to enjoy his pretty young daugh>
ter, and in the end he hoped she would
marry Tom Graham, who had grown up
in his business and was now junior part
ner, and who had been in love with Mary
Ellen all his honest young life. So Mr.
Blank argued. and Tom pleaded his cause
but ell TO no avail. Mary Ellen affirmed
her decision that she was welded to art
and that she had espoused a career. and
quite turned up her superior nose at the
girls who only cared for parties and
beaux.
Now, Mr.. Blank knew this world pretty
well, and so one day he called Tom into
his private office and held a long consul
tation with him, closing with the remark:
''She wants a career. Well I'm going TO
let her go up against IL good and hard,
and see If 1t won't knock some sense in
her."
That night he astonished Mary Ellen by
telling her that he had been thinking II
over, and he had decided that IL she was
sure she wanted to leave home and de-
vote her life to her arr he would raise
no further objections, but that he would
only make her a very small allowance.
This amazed Mary Ellen, but as she had
loudly proclaimed that the vanities and
luxuries of life were nothing to her, she
was too proud 40 ask for more money.
Still more to her surprise, Tom seemed
to coincide with her father and told her
that he perceived that she was right and
that, while he could never love anyone
else but her, he didn't feel that he had
any right to stand in the way of her hap
piness and success in the career she had
chosen.
It wasn't exactly what Mary Ellen had
expected, and when she left home with
the smallest check in her pocket she hao
ever had. and Toms cheerful good-by
ringing in her ears. she begun to doubt
IL an artistic career was ell that she had
fondly imagined and in the succeeding
months that impression gained force.
She ascertained that real artists held
quite different standards of criticism
from the teachers az her school. and that
they didn't seem very enthusiastic about
her gifts. She also made acquaintance
with New York hall bedrooms and cheap
table dhote restaurants and ready-made
clothes, and she forgot how opera boxes
and thaater tickets, and long-stemmed
roses. and all the little indulgences she
had been used to. seemed. Neither did
II raise her spirits to hear that Tom was
going about a deal with that pretty Gray
girl. Finally Mary Ellen sat down and
took counsel with herself. It was the
day the art critic told her that in about
six years more study he thought she
would know enough TO teach beginners,
and the end of her meditations was the
following wire to her father:
II am sick OF art. Send me enough
money to come home on"
Tom answered the telegram. He found
her a homesick little bundle OF nerves.
in a dingy back room she called a studio.
and he gathered her into his arms. and
she sobbed out the story OF her troubles