The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-03-15
WOMEN SMATTERERS AND
 WOMEN SCATTERERS

It Is quite true that the more things one can do well the more perfect as human being one will be. That is one side of the truth. The other is that the more things one half learns the more this person scatters her mind and brain power, tntur1ng her mental faculties in proportion. A child is interested in ev- erything it sees. Pin it down to one kind of play an hour, and it grows weary and says: Let us put it away now" The grown person who possesses a pow erful, trained intellect will sit hour after hour, knowing no weariness, fatigue or Tagging of enthusiasm in his occupation. It IS said Edison has remained in his laboratory fifteen hours at a stretch, studying and working, forgetting the out side world.
 Now. in proportion as a woman will stick to one or two things she can achieve success to the extent of her abil- iues. Half the American women of to- day, however, seem to be mere Smatter- CTS and scatterers. There are so many | splendid things to do in our noble coun- try that they dabble in a dozen different | ones, achieving success in none and get ting their minds addled by and by so | they cannot hold fast even to one thought five minutes.
 i Most girls think they would like to learn music. They begin piano practice, keep at 1t a short time, learn enough to rattle the keys in an infantile way, then tire of the mental effort of pinning them selves down steadily and quit imperfect thrumsters. What Is the verdict? This: | There are no great women piaHists. Woman lacks the power to be a great pl- | anist.' Another girl thinks 1t would be | nice to be an artist She learns a lit- l tie feeble drawing; the drudgery of it is | irksome: she will go into painting at once. | She makes few pretty roses, copied | from picture, not from the real flow orange upon plate, perhaps even an | old shoe and pipe, and she calls that art Her work is in nearly all cases out | of drawing, her motif trivial and mean l ingless. What is the verdict? There has never been but one great woman art ist. Women are not capable of being | artists"
 | Then maybe the woman flies to mod cling, next to poker burnt work, then to | china painting and firing. After that she dabbles in so called art embroidery. Pos l sibly then the college sentiment fad | strikes her, and she devotes herself to | that for six whole months. The woman 8 | club is left for her to experiment with. She goes in for that. Maybe she belongs | to a dozen clubs at once. If there are l constant excitement, fashionable dress ing and gossip in these clubs, they hold l the woman smatterer and scatterer long CT than any other one interest Is able | to do.
 At length this woman who has frit- tered away her intellectual powers in smattering and scattering becomes inca l Men say women are shallow, superficial and childish and that their light brains | cannot think deeply or reason, and this is why. They have wantonly wasted splendid brain power, scattering 1t as the sower upon the stony places of the Bible parable Gladstone, Bismark and Napo- leon could not have achieved any object if they had strewn their powers all along
 the bypaths leading off the straight road
 Shakespeare himself was never anything
 but an actor-playwright. He did hot even
 take time from his dramatic pursuits to | be a very good domestic man. so far as we are informed.
 My sisters, it's no use. Even an Amer ican woman cannot pursue twenty aims
 and achieve them. The only way to reach | excellence is to carefully select what you
 desire to do. Take the thing you like best or can do best then pursue il l through fire and hail After you have
 reached the top notch in that try some
 thing else if you wish, but, whatever you take up. make yourself excellent in
 1t, seeing 1t through to the end. Then
 men will cease to say womens brains
 are childish, superficial and silly.
 Jane Moses.