The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-11-21
WOMEN AND COMMON SENSE.
A Writer Says It's the Rarsst Combi-
nation in the World.

The rareSt combination in this world
is women and common sense. Women
Of ability, of talent, of genius even, are
plentiful as blaekberries, but the wo-
man who has the supreme endowment
of a calm and logical mind, and who
can see subject just as it is, without
prejudice, passion or fear is as scarce
almost as frost in June.
Not only do women seldom have any
common sense, but they do not desire
to have any. 1t is not a virtue that
appeals to them, and it disconcerts
them when anybody calls on them to
meet a situation with reason instead of
Mysteries. 1t comes by nature to them
to be self-saerif1cing, tender, to- suffer
the mere unjustly the better-but when
they face a situation Shorn of heroicS
and only needing good. hard common
sense to deal with 1t, they feel them
selves at a disadvantage. They are out
of their running.
Yet the need of the world is for COM
mon sense. Tt is unromantically true
that half of the tragedies of life, and
most of the troubles, we make for our
selves because we persist in looking at
things from every point of view except
the practical one. This is true of men
as well as women, but women are the
tumble fight of life knocks some sort
of common sense into even the most
visionary of men, while women, from
the sheltered nook of their own firesides,
blandly continue to look out upon life
Of theories instead of facts.
Tradition and custom alike have con-
spired to foster this weakness in wo
men. It is taken for granted that they
will be illogical and unreasonable, and
that they will burst into tears and
swoon when the time for decisive action
arrives, and that they will generally be
guided by their hearts instead of their
heads. And women encourage this
view. They have a mania for being
thought artistic, intellectual, poetic,
aesthetic. but it seems to them almost
brutality unfeminine for a woman to be
sensible. They look upon her with the
suspicion they feel toward woman
who doesn't wear corsets, and who has
the nerve to refuse to be held up by
professional beggars. They feel that
there is something unnatural and un-
canny about her. She may be all right,
but she's peculiar.
To this inability to look at things from
a practical standpoint may be attributed
woman's talent for borrowing trouble. She
never waits for sorrow to come to lsSr- She
goes forth to look it up, and If she doesn t
have any of her own she assumes that OF
her friends. Above all, she anticipates. II
her children are well she agonizes over
what she would suffer if they were i'll:
while her boys are in roundabouts she be-
gins to worry over the dangers OF collego
life; while her girls are still babies she IS
miserable, thinking how unlind their pcs
sible husbands may. be to them IN Mr..
Dixon's new novel he tells about man
library this sentence: IT am old and
have had much trouble, but most OF It
never happened" No woman would have
ever a pied that for her motto, and she
couldn't have lived up to it If she had she
has plenty of troubles and the trouDfas
that never happened troubled her more
than the ones that did
The folly of making love the whole feast
of life, inside of merely side dish. - an
other feminine misfortune that IS the dl-
rect result of Woman's inability to see
things as they are. To love and be loved
perfectly are two supreme happineSses
that fate can bestow upon us, but because
one misses either one Of these good things
or both is no more reason for making
ones self miserable than it is to starva
to death because one can't afford terrap pin
and champagne Without doubt one pre-
fers the banquet to the frugal table d'hote
but one may dine comfortably on roast
beef and beer, and even tea and toast are
not to be despised If one can get nothing
else
There is so much in life besides leve-so
many interests and anuseu7ents, 50 much
work to do. so many rewards to gaIn-that
it seems incredible that woman could let
the mere fact that she was overlooked by
men wreck her happiness. yet how many
bitter and sour old maids have We known.
who might have found solace. one would
have thought, in merely contemplating
their married friends domestic infelicitiss,
and rejecting that it was. at least. better
TO be lonely than ii was to be bulldozed.-
New Orleans Picayune-