The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-03-29
EASY TO SCARE A MAN AWAY.

According to a London dispatch, the
women of the ancient town of Gull
ford, in Surrey, have leaped into sud
den fame by forming an anti-matri-
moniaI trust that they call the So
ciety for Promoting Mans Indifference
Among Women. They have secured
quarters that they have christened the
Spinsters' Retreat, and describe them
selves as young women and those old
er in years withstanding temptations
TO enter the married state" The rules
of the order. as they have been made
public, compel the members to have
a wholesome contempt for falling in
love, to abhor marriage and to dis
play the society's badge at least one
day a week. Members are not de-
barred from friendship with the oppo-
site sex, but it must be purely pla-
tonic and free from sentiment.
Considering, says Dorothy Dix in the
New Orleans Picayune, that men are
men, and women are women, and that
the pursuit of each other has been
the chief business of life ever since
the dawn of creation, it would seem
that a society for the promotion of
mans indifference among women had
its work cut out for it. No one can
deny, however, that it enters upon a
field of large usefulness, for any pro-
cess of education that would render
woman Indifferent to man would be an
emancipation that would make the
right to vote, and even to her own
pocketbook, sink into innocuous desue-
tude.
When the time comes when a woman
can stay single because she prefers it,
without feeling that she has to apollo
gize for being an old maid, when
woman would rather talk to an intelli-
gent woman than stupid man, when
a girl can dance at party with an
other girl without looking as if it were
a funeral occasion and she was the
remains, then, and not until then, will
woman be free.
We have not reached that point yet
We have not attained the pinnacle of
Indifference to man where we can
cheerfully do without him, and any
thing that tends to promote that be-
attic state is a step towards happ-
ness, for disguise it as we may, man is
coming to be more and more a luxury,
and the true philosophy consists in en-
joying his society when you have it,
you haven't got it, without repining.
When women come to regard men as
an annex to life instead of the whole
thing, they may snap their fingers at
fate.
1t is not to be denied that up to now
there has been no pretense of indif-
ference among women so far as men
was concerned. They have frankly
striven for his notice, and have been
happy when they got it, and miserable
when they missed it. The women who
are truly envied by other women are
not the Nine de Staels and George
Eliots and Florence Nightingales, they
are the famous beauties who have al
ways had platoons of lovers signing
at their feet.
So we are daily witnesses of the
notifying spectacle of women running
after men, and chasing them down and
marrying them in spite of themselves.
We see girls who are dull, lethargic,
unintereSting in the presence of women,
but who are galvanized into instant
life and animation the minute anything
in trousers heaves in sight. We know
women who, like cats, have only
scratches for their own sex, but who
purr so loudly and so melodiously you
can hear them all over the place when
a man deigns to notice them, that we
feel that any sort of a society that can
foster a spirit of Indifference among
such women towards men will go a
long way towards filling a longfelt
want.
If the Guilford women's Society for
Promoting Womans Indifference To-
wards Men is a defensive measure for
the furtherance of content and happi-
ness among women, it is admirable, but
If it is intended to be an offensive move,
it looks like going to a lot of unneces-
sary trouble. In these strenuous matri-
monial times, when the supply of hus-
bands is so far below the demand, any
woman can keep from getting mar
ried without the assistance of a So
ciety at her back. 1t is simply dead
easy to scare man away from the
proposing point.