The Minneapolis journal., 1903-04-11
THE EXPERIENCES OF
MRS. J. MATRIMONIAL BLISS
She Tells Friend Miss Emily Lonely Why She Is No Longer Club
and Unable to Match Braid With.
out Making Botch Of It.
BY EMILY HOLT.

whirled into the kitchen and welded a
soapy dishcloth and an egg beater in: place
of the oaken gavel Of authority.
Thereafter, T observed that John Bliss
didn't find 1t necessary to spend a single
evening downtown Shaving at that mys-
teriously pressing business, and yet :
hadnt said a reproa chful word nor shed a
tear. s:l5: sa gsSs.s 4 se
'ItWas in that week, too, that wrote
a paper for the next meeting of my club !
and I called it "A New Light on the
Suffrage Question; or, the Royal Road to
the Ballot Box It was by all odds the .
best paper 7 ever wrote. for it embodied
the actual results and effects Of practical
experiment and was full Of plain common
sense. It dwelt on the fact that I had sud-
denly discovered that the quickest way
to get the voting privilege was to give up
organized petitioning and bullying mas 4
cullne legislatures and noisy expensive,
-wracking women's convention
I'm place of these hitherto unproftable$ I
and unproductive methods, actually sug-
gested that club women disperse to their
homes; feed their husbands on 1.-THE pick Of
the market and the culinary art; get the
children happily off to school in the NOR
ming and smilingly to bed at night; serve
meals by the clock; do spring and fall
cleaning by stealth, some improved and
convenient system, and make the butch
er's bill look like 80 cents, the ice man
like a philanthropist, and the drygoods
account a. mere trife. In addition, ad-
vised wholesale boycott 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 exercise for any healthy set Of
feminine muscles. -." T., @
II ventured to prophecy that, as a result
of this happy state of domestic affairs,
1,ycH 1o sic oo1r oy
we'll fed, so grateful and admiring, so
| awestruck and surprised, so humble and
docile that, for the asking. they would
lay the voting privilege at our feet and
honestly consider it a quite Inadequate
return for the incalculable blessings the
women had bestowed. .r
II 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 diplomacy than
by sedition privy conspiracy and rebellion.
| I had to admit that this course would in
volve the closing up Of several hundred
| dozen of other clubs besides the suffrage
organizations, but, after 5000 years of try
| ing to break men Of the club habit, this
fancy Of women to-day for multiplying
clubs of their own on every pretext did
| look rather queer and inconsistent. ri-e
my heaviest volley of argument kept
| for the last, when I called my listeners
attention to the fact, made evident by
| statistics and observation, that with the
growth of women's clubs had been noted
| an appalling increase In premature gray
ness, double chins,a wrinkles and nervous
prostration. I shuddered to think Of what
must be the ultimate results, to feminine
| looks especially, Of many more years of
| the club habit. IN. s-~-
| Il could see that with some of the
young and pretty married: women my
suggestions were taken very seriously.
but by the majority my paper was voted
down as unworthy of consideration by the
| strong, progressive, woman of the hour.
! I'm me, Miss Emily, you no longer
| see a woman who is unable to discuss
Duse, worship the latest long haired god
oftmusic, or match a dress braid without
| making a botch of it. No more do Leon
slider the mystery of the Infinite while
I wash my back hair at the shampoo club
down the street, and I have ceased to be-
| lfeve that we can elucidate the. whole
trouble Of domestic service by getting the
housemaids, cooks and 1aundresses to-
gether and reading Ruskin to them in a
nice little club of their own.
| my present conviction is that the best
club In the world for woman is her own
home. If she can conduct that on creased
wheels, she has proved herself the pos
SCISSOR Of more tact, patience, patriotism,
| common sense and genuine business abil-
| ity than the president of all the federated
woman's clubs of the universe, and she
deserves we'll of her husband and Of her
country" y. -.