Los Angeles herald., 1905-10-08

wv thing on earth? A woman.
What is the next most delight
full thing on earth? Another woman
So long as man, born of woman. re-
mains the intellectual master of created
matter he will continue to look upon
the mother who bore him and the wo-
man who is the actual or potential
mother of his children as the great and
Overwhelming glory, force and mystery
among created things.
Philosophers, poets, musicians, artists
in canvas and in stone have wreaked
At the beginning all approached her
with awe and worship. AS the disillu-
sionizlng years stole from this or that
ardent weakling the sense of wonder
which has always tested her strength
with the strong, what are called synic-
ism and micogyny were born. But
cynicism, we all know, is sentimental
ism soured. AS surely as hate is in
Verted love. so misogyny, the pretended
hate of woman, is simply the rage
which aff1icts proud and sensitive ego
tism in the presence of a mystery that
battles the pride of masculine intelli-
gence.
Some of the most laudatory of the
laureates of the sex are found among
English and American authors, some of
the most poignantly sarcastic among
the French, some of the most d1Scrlm1-
native among the German.
Here is Byron, who could be as Sc
verely cynical as the veriest French
man, describing woman as
The star that guides the wanderer, thou!
The dove of peace and promise to mine
ark!
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the clouds
away
And tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.
;o1 kJ1,.oA
women and loved only one putting his
love for that one into words which he
applies to the entire sex:
My latest found
Heavens last, best gift my ever new
Grace was in her shape, heaven in her
In every gesture dignity and love.
Here is Otway crying out:
All woman! lovely woman! nature made
To temper man; we had been brutes with
Angels are painted fair to look like you;
There's in you all that we believe of
Amazing brightness. purity and truth,
Eternal joy and everlasting love.
Leasing declares that nature meant
to make woman it's masterpiece. Long
before Leasing the thought may be
found in proverbial literature. Here is
us II I6ICH lOllIl-
Second thoughts are best. God
created man; woman was the after
thought
great French poet echoes the
French proverb, God made her small"
says Alfred de Musset, Sin order to do
a more choice bit of workmanship"
But it was a great Scotch poet, Robert
Burns, who made the thought forever
his own by putting it into an unforgot-
ten form:
Aud nature swears, the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, o!
Her prentice han she tried on man.,
An then she made the lasses, o!
Scott in some much quoted and ever
quotable lines, recognizes the dual
quality in the being he loves:
o woman! in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
BY the light qu1Verlng aspen made.
When pain and anguish wiring the brow
A miniStering angel thou!
"Womans at best a contradiction
STILL" says Pope. So, the moralist may
add, is man. But woman is ten times
more complex in her Inconsistencies, as
Byron has pointed out:
What strange thing is man! and what
a stranger
Is woman what whirlwind is her head,
And what a whirlpool full of depth and
Is ali the rest about her, whether wed,
Or widow. maid or mother. she can
change her
Mind like the wind; whatever she has
said
Or done is light to what she'll say or do
The oldest thing on record, and yet new I!
There is no saying so shallow as