The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-09-20
WOMEN AND COMMON SENSE.

is women and common sense. Women
of ability, of talent, of genius even, are
plentiful as blackberries, but the WON.
an who has the supreme endowment of
calm and logical mind, and who can
see subject just as it is, without pre-
JUDGE, passion or fear, is as scarce al
most as frost in June.
Not only do women seldom have any
common sense, says Dorothy Dix in the
New Orleans Picayune, but they do
not desire to have any. 1t is not vir-
tue that appeals to them, and it dis
concerts them when anybody calls on
them to meet a situation with reason
instead of Mysteries. 1t comes by ma
ture to them to be self-sacrificing, ten
der, to suffer-the more untustly the
better-but when they face a situation
shorn of heroics and only needing
good, hard common sense to deal with
it, they feel themselves at a disadvan-
tage. They are out of their running
Yet the need of the world is for
common sense. 1t is automatically
true that half of the tragedies of life,
and most of the troubles, we make for
ourselves because we persist in looking
at things from every point of view, ex-
cept the practical one. This is true of
men as well as women, but women are
the greatest offenders. The rough-and-
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 fire
sides, blindly continue to look out upon
a life of theories, instead of facts.
Tradition an6 custom alilye n va oor.
sptred to foster this weakness in wom-
en-. 1t is taken for granted that they
VIII be illogical and unreasonable, and
that they will burst go 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, halt it seems to them almost
brutality unfeminine for a woman to be
sensible. They look upon her with the
ST spicion they feel towards a 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 at
tributed woman's talent for borrowing
trouble. She never waits for sorrow
to come to her. 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. If
her children are well she agonizes over
what she would suffer if they were ill;
while her boys are in roundabouts, she
begins worrying over the dangers of
college life; while her girls are still
babies, she is miserable, thinking how
unkind their possible husbands may be
to them. In Mr.. Dixon's new novel he
tells about a man who had carved over
the mantel in his library this sentence:
II am old and have had much trouble,
but most of it never happened" No
woman would have ever adopted that
for her motto, and she couldn't have
lived up to it If she had. She has
plenty of trouble. and the troubles that
never happened troubled her more than
the ones that did.
Tho folly of making love the whole
feast of life instead of merely a side
dish is another feminine misfortune
that is the direct result of womans in
| ability to see things as they are. To
| love and be loved perfectly are the two
supreme happinesses that fate can be-
stow upon us, but because one misses
either one of these good things. or
! booh, is no more reason for making
herself miserable than it is to starYe to
| death because one can't afford terrapin
! and champagne. Without doubt one
! prefers the banquet to the frugal table
| dhote, but one may dine comfortably
on roast beef and beer, and even tea
! and roast are not to be despised if one
| can get nothing else.
There is SO much in life besides love
so many interests and amusements,
so 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 hap
| piness. 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 intelicities,
| and rejecting that it was, at least, bet
ter to be lonely than it was to be bull
| doZed.
Nor do wives as a general thing look
at the matter with a whit more reason.
When man marries a woman he takes
it for granted that she will continue to
| love him until the end of the chapter,