The Savannah morning news., 1902-02-16
WOMANS
WORLD.

so long ago might nave Deen duueu
,,o minor one 'to be found out" but
~ YOU are very rich you may be 'gib-
borad din velvet, and a luxurious sus-
nended chair) as often as you like, and
M one will think a pin the worses of
,o,, II is the chef of a house, not the
cbaracter of it's master or mistress,
rho determines that masters position
,on,adays. and decides the quality of
the company he keeps.
Of minor sins. or lapses, perhaps one
of the worst is to be seen in the COM
many of a nobody-that is to say,
narson who has only birth or brains
or beauty of life to recommend him.
Another is to go to the wrong tailors
and bootmakers, dressmakers or mill
liners
TO take your husband about with
Won. instead of some other woman's
husband. is a sin against society as
constituted to- day, and to wear a
smile on your face, or to seem to
think life worth living, is also hope
lessly vulgar. You must carry your
head high, half close your eyes ap-
near bornee. To be happy, to blush
even. is fatal to the perilous business
of being smart.
In the old days persons of social po-
sition looked askance at a woman who
wore clothes to which her husbands
purse was quite inadequate. "Over-
dressed was the damning word usual
" applied to woman unsuitably at
tired for her station in life; "dishon
orsble" was it's harsher term; and the
undoubted sin cimmitted> against So
ciety, against good breeding, caused
the sinner to be frowned down in a
way little conducive to the enjoyment
Of her ambitious plumes. Nowadays,
when a woman is asked out to dinner
because she is decorative and may be
trusted not to wear a gown that will
disturb the perfect scheme of color of
the dinner table, it matters nothing to
the hostess who paid for her frock;
the social sin would be if the guest
came badly dressed apd- did not reflect
credit on her entertainer.
Next to the sin of being poor is the
deadly one of being in earnest and
taking serious things seriously. Not
to discuss everything in a fiippant
spirit, not to find comedy in tragedy,
human the subject of an epigram is to
be prig and a bore.
The man or woman who most sue
cessfully hides any signs of brains or
principle has the greatest success to-
day; and to have mastered the art of
double entendre, to talk in a jargon of
allusion and inference not to be COM
pretended of the uninitiated, to se-
cretly bend every energy to amuse,
xVttb ma
ness and reproducing in a phrase the
subject Of the moment, that is all that
is required, and society will raptur-
ously welcome even the old, the ugly
and the lli-bred, IL only the knack of
talking CHEEKY nonsense be theirs.
There is something to be said on the
side of laughter of this persistent ef-
fort of the rich and idle to laugh at
all times and In all seaSons. and thew
are certainly far pieasanter to deal
With, FOR instance, tnan the RdrNdiis,
who err deeply from the very opposite
reason: for was not Cultivate cheer
fulness' one of the most strenuously ly
prearAod of brilliant DR.. Momerie's
doctrines? But there is a wide differ
ergo between the cheerfulness that has
its root in good heart, and a great
desire to encourage and make happier
less fortunate people, and the crack
ling of thorns beaneath the pot that
society calls mrth. Profanity and
lavty would better describe it, and a
topsy- turveydom of IDEAS and princi-
pies, in which vice alone Is gay and
amusing, virtue a dull dog for whom
every one has a kick.
Society does not want to be instruct
ed, preached at, or taught the way 1t
should go; 1t even bitterly resents the
passive object Lessons displayed by
beautiful. unworldly lives, that, highly
placed in the world carefully escheW
it, and who find their happiness In
home, and books and nature.
Men nave laughed and women have
wept for ages. Woman's tears have
been featured far more than they de-
serve, and the heroines OF the old
fashioned novels must have been a
damp, red-eyed lot of girls even in
their most joyous moments.
The fact is. says the Woman's Home
Companion, that women have overdone
their crying, and have allowed any
amount of health, courage, and force
to ooze from their ar-glands. Weep
ing in the old days was really as
fashionable as fanting, and the poems
Of Moore and Byron dwell ecstatically
upon the tears of the various Julias
and Marys of their songs, so crying
spells must have had their charm in
those days, as well as ringlets and
wasp waists.
But the woman of the future will
laugh. and will be all the better for 1t.
Girls have never been allowed to cult
rate humorous sense as they grew up
Until within quite recent years, when
Intelligence is gaining such victories
IN the nursery. Boisterous conduct or
loud laughter have always been re-
proved In little girls, while in boy
such eXuberance is regarded as nat
ural and healthy sex attribute. This
is one of the reasons that the humor-
GUS sense, which in children is usually
evidenced in the love of frolic is killed
IN the feminine nature. To laugh is
rude. That constitutes tine law for the
woman child in whose brain-cells mis-
chlevous fun is beginning to bubble.
The result of all this is that few wo-
men know how TO laugh. The laugh of
tne child is repressed, and IL develops
INTO the giggle of the girl. Then the
Rggle is criticised, and many women
continue, in their efforts to be polite,
10 gurgle and gasp into their handker-
cnlefs until the end of the chapter.
lady curate" is something new
lney are trying to obtain in England.
lnere have been deaconesses and dea-
conesses. but a clergyman's wife has
asked for the aid of the lady curate. 1t
seems that the deaconess while her
Work Is all that II should be I'm a way.
u"es not entirely fill the want of an
.. i've worker. The deaconess, says the
NeW York Times, is considered to wear
700 much the air of the sisters OF me-
"'aeNal converts. she Is fond of form