The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-04-19

Fortunately, though. I found wasn't | so emancipated as thought I was. At | this crisis it occurred to me that I was | giving good deal of attention to other peoples business while my own affairs | were getting into snarl that threat | ened tragedy. did not go to that con- vention. Instead I put Bobby to bed, | with his newly arrived grandmother as nurse, and whirled into the kitchen and yielded a soapy dishcloth and an egg beater in place of the oaken gavel of authority
 Thereafter. observed that John Bliss didn't find it pecessary to spend a single evening downtown slaving at that mys- teriously pressing business. and yet II hadn't said reproachful word nor shed a tear. ".
 Tt was in that week, too that wrote paper for the next meeting of my club and l called it A New Light on the Suf- frage Question; or, the Royal Road to the Ballot Box It was by all odds the best paper l ever wrote, for 1t embodied the actual results and effects of practi- cal expertmnet and was full of plain common Sense, dwelt on the fact that I had suddenly discovered that the quick est way to get the voting privilege was to give up orga a1ized petitioning and bullying of masculine Legislatures and
 
 mems conventions.
 Tn place of these hitherto unprofitabie and unproductiye methods, l actually suggested that club women disperse to their homes; feed their husbands on the pick of the market and the culinary art; get the children happily off to school in the morning and smilingly to bed at | night; serve meals by the clock: do spring and fall cleaning by stealth, or some improved and convenient system; | and make the butchers bill look like cs cents. the ice man like philanthropist, and the dry goods account a mere trife. In addition, advised a wholesale boy cott of the servant problem, by every woman going into her own scientifically fitted little kitchen and proving what she has been telling the incompetent hired help for years-that. cooking Is mighty easy and housework just good ex- ercise for any healthy set of feminine muscles. T ventured to prophecy that, as re- | suit of this happy state of domestic af- fairs, countless husbands would be so sleek, so we'll fed so grateful and ad- miring, so awe struck and surprised, so humble and docle, that, for the asking, they would lay the voting privilege at our feet and honestly consider it quite inadequate return for the incalculable blessings the women had bestowed.
 T remarked forcibly that it was far
 better to win and rule by love than by
 fear, and that men are human and more
 apt to be led to make concessions by
 force of generous treatment and diplo-
 macy than by sedition, privy conspiracy
 and rebellion. l had to admit that this
 course would involve the closing up ot
 several hundred dozen of other clubs be-
 sides the suffrage organizations, but, af-
 ter 5000 years of trying to break men
 of the club habit, this fancy of women
 today for multiplying clubs of their owr
 on every pretext did look rather queer
 and inconsistent.
 i. My heaviest voliey of argument kepi
 for the last, when called my listen
 CTS attention to the fact, made evident \ by statistics and observation. that with
 the growth of women's clubs had beer
 noted an appalling increase in premature
 grayness, double chins. wrinkles and ner
 vous prostration. I shuddered to thinl
 of what must be the ultimate results, tC feminine looks especially, of many more years of the club habit.
 T could see that with some of tho
 young and pretty married women my sug 1 gestions were taken very seriously, but
 by the majority my paper was voted
 down as unworthy of consideration by
 the strong, progressive women of tho hour.
 Tn me, Miss Emily, you no longer set
 a woman who is unable to discuss Duse worship the latest long-haired god o music, or match a dress braid withou making botch of it. No more do con
 slider the mystery of the Infinite while
 wash my back hair at the shampoo clul down the street, and l have ceased tC believe that we can elucidate the whol' trouble of domestic service by getting the housemaids. cooks and laundressei together and reading Ruskin to them 1T l a nice little club of their own.
 , My present conviction is that the bes
 club in the world for a woman is he own home. If she can conduct that or ] greased wheels, she has proved hersel , the possessor of more tact, patience, pa triotism. common sense and genuine bus , mess ability than the president of al the federated woman's clubs of the uni 1 verse, and she deserves well of her bus
 band and of her country"
 . Copyright, 1903. by Emily Holt.)