The Savannah morning news., 1904-12-04
WINDING OUR OWN BUSINESS.

Every now and then I am forcibly
reminded of the fact that the millen-
ium will have arrived when we learn
to mind our own business.
But it will be an Eveless Eden,
without single woman in it.
No woman has yet arrived, or shows
signs of arriving. at the point Of grace
when she can behold another person
making pie, without putting her fin
ger in it. 1t has always been that
way. And it has always been her
bane. She has broken her heart over
other peoples sorrows. She has lain
awake nights. and lost sleep. over 9TH
err peoples worries. She has brought
on more nervous prostration trying to
run other peoples affairs. and stirred
up more heartburnings and jealousy,
and bitterness and strife, than all 9TH
er causes combined, just because she
would not mind her own business.
1t is a distinctly feminine mania,
the end whereof is trouble and tribu-
lation. The average man feels he has
has got about all he can manage with
his own affairs, and trouble enough of
his own, without borrowing his neigh
bor 8. The average women attends to
her business in the intervals she isn't
specializing about why the Browns
don't send their children to the pub
lie school when Brown is only on a
salary, and how the Smiths, across
the street, can afford new carpets
this season. And the queerest part Of
it all is that, by some quirk of femi-
nine logic, this unwarranted meddling
with other peoples affairs is account
ed a virtue. A woman's definition of
another woman who was selfish
creature would be one who attended
strictly to her own business, and
didn't interfere with some remedy Of
her own when the children next door
had the Group.
This inability to attend to her own
business, and leave other people to
run theirs without any assistance
from her, goes a long way towards ex-
planning many of woman's failures. 1t
is one reason why so many women
break down. They try to carry the
universe on their shoulders. They
could manage well enough with their
own work, and bear with sufficient
fortitude their own troubles, but when
they add to that the accumulated af-
f1ictions of everybody in the neighbor-
hood they collapse under the nervous
strain. 1t is doubtless pity that Mrs.
Jones should be such a poor manager,
and so wasteful and extravagant; it
is much to be regretted that young
Blank does not go to work and sup
port his widowed mother, possibly 1t
is a crying shame that the Gray baby
should be fed on sauerkraut and beer
instead of sterilized milk. but, after
all we are not responsible for these
affairs, and there isn't a blessed thing
we can do about them. The Jones, and
the Blanks, and the Grays of our re-
spective neighborhoods don't want our
advice, and wouldn't take it at any
price, and we merely wear ourselves
into frazzles with unavailing worry
over something that doesn't in the
least concern us.
OF course, when there is any real
need for a Solomon we all feel cap
able of speaking right up, but it is
we'll to occasionally reflect that other
people are almost as capable of run
ming their own affairs as we would be.
This is always a surprise to us. There
was probably never a marriage when
everybody in the community didn't feel
that they could have made much
more judicious selection for both par
ties than they made for themselves,
yet divorce is comparatively rare.
Every one of us is dead sure that we
could bring up every body elses chill
dren much better than they are doing
1t, yet the children go along turning
out all right in spite of our predictions
TO the contrary. We really afflict our
selves about these matters. We are
reduced to tears because Sally So-And-
So is going to marry the man she
wants instead of the man we think
would suit her, and we aggravate our
souls in vain because little Mrs. Some
body else let's her babies play in the
back yard with the cat instead of hav-
ing them folding paper mats at the kim
dergarten. If the sympathy we lavish
on people who don't want it and don't
need it, and the amount of wasted
energy we expend on other peoples af-
fairs, could be applied to some useful
purpose it would revolutionize the
world.
that womans fondness for having
q finger in every pie is at the root of
the servant girl trouble, but II is a
fact, nevertheless. In trying to at
tend TO her own business a woman
often overdoes it. She attends too
much. When a man hires a clerk OF
bookkeeper he permits him freedom
to do the work within certain lines,
pretty much as he pleases, in his own
way. II he accomplishes satisfactory
results it is all that is necessary. No
one nags him continually, or aggra-
Yates him with petty and infinitesimaI.
hair-sphtting details about the way he
does it. When he is in the midst OF
making out bill, or adding up a col