The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1903-11-14
is IT "JUST LIKE WOMEN?"

Thoughtless persons who read about the mar
riage of the English Duke of Roxburghe to the
American Miss GoeIet will be interested only in
one feature of the affair. That feature does not
take in the ceremony nor the parties concerned in
it so much as it takes i'll the mob of well dressed
women whose struggles to get peep at the bride
defed all efforts of the police to prevent. Gust
like women the thoughtess will say, responding
alone to the humor most unwomanly spectacle
provoked.
Not so will the serious minded pass upon it.
"Just like women" does not apply to all women,
else this would be an unhappy, intolerable ex-
stence The report may be true, and doubtless
is true, that ten thousand persons, mostly well
dressed" women lined five blocks of Fifth avenue
in New York and conducted themselves in riot
Gus manner but we are certain womanly woman
is counted in that number. No womanly woman
will conduct herself as to earn the contempt of
a sensible man. The cravings OF curiosity sorely
tempting, but the womanly woman is able to re-
sist them as she resists the efforts to undermine
chastity. She does this so much better than man,
preserving her virtue in spite of everything, that
we cannot help loving the womanly woman
To the serious man more than to the serious
woman this spectacle at New York is the most
shocking. He it is that exalts woman to the i'm
agery of Ruth in the Old Testament, He loves to
find her as John Alden found Priscilla Hope in
the early days of New England. He hugs the
thought that resemblance of the Jewish and
Puritan maids belongs to his own mother and sis
ters His affections are of the spiritual rather
than of the carnal. He goes about in search of
a wife. Does he find any Ruths or Priscilas in
Society" Does he discover the womany
in the ranks of the -Four Hundred" Must his
choice be outside the circle of American girls
This last query appears offensive. 1t is if it
applies to all American girls, but it does not
Americans are not ready to surrender all there
is of woman womanly to foreigners. writer in
an English magazine recently set up the Ameri-
can woman as an anarchist in society; that her
incnations were rather to destroy good form than
initiate it, American editors resented that charge,
as Americans naturally do, although knowing
it is more than half true. The shameful
demonstration at New York corroborates the Eng
lish writer's argument.
1t is humiliating for an American to make such
confession, but the truth must prevail. We care
nothing for the American women who marry titled
bankrupts, for they are longer Americans In
name if they were ever Americans in heart. a
good radiance when they are off for Europe. But
the influence of their conduct in Society" has
wrought mischief for American women. Display
of wealth and the vanity of fashion promote
archy only differing in degree from the popular
notion of anarchy. 1t is the American woman and
not the foreign woman who yields to it. @
New York is sometimes called foreign" city.
More than half the population are foreigners, and
nearly all foreigners there are poor people with
large families. This is one blessing that comes
with poverty. The woman who has children to
for and household duties to perform does not
neglect them in order to get peep at bride in
Fifth avenue wedding. 1t is the "well dressed"
and prominent" who can crafty that curiosity
the woman with servants and the woman without
babies at home Therefore must we conclude that
the well dressed mob whom the police could not
control at the Goelet-Roxburghe nuptials were all,
or nearly all, American women
God help the whose future depends upon
such women. Think of a country with such wo-
men as voters and the candidates for whom they
would vote