The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-09-12
UNGATHERED ROSES.

| S&NNA ALALA4h4&1 AASE2A<la
 Massachusetts has many claims to I distinction; her sons and daughters are not likely to allow the world to forget them. But among them is one which has not always been aproaised at its full value, even by the most ardent 1 Bostonian. For years the women in Massachusetts have greatly exceeded 1 the men in numbers. The most recent census, only just completed, shows that | there is no decline in the ratio and that very large number of women in the old Commonwealth would not marry even were they ever 50 favorably in- I clined to do so. This fact has been 1 accepted by some persons within the borders of the State as regrettable, but 1 such a view of the situation is both wrong and foolish. The surplus of spinisters is a cause for rejoicing.
 l The New England spinister has ever been an important factor in American national life. and, nowhere has she held such undisputed sway from the i very first as in Massachusetts, She is the preserver and custodian of the New England conscience. But for her this singular product of climate and circumstance would longsince have become atrophied. We have some times had conscientious married wo- men; occasionally the needless giving up of pleasure, which is the most striking characteristic of the New En- 1 gland conception of godliness. has b en seen in the mother of family as well as In the old maid aunt; but the ma jority> of cases a woman must have reached the spinister age before mar riage in order to acquire the real gen i ius for self-sacrif1ce which has martyr ed so many New England women. Some of us have laughed over this self ! abnegation, apparently so pathetically unnecessary; some of us have found it more conducive to tears. But the fact remains that the New England con- science has preserved the sterner and stronger features oe the national char acter side by side with it's develop ment upon purely commercial lines an that to the spinister more than any one else has fallen the task of keeping alive the tradition of high, if strange i ly narrow, ideal.
 l He 5plillSlGE Dl UHGtESdCLlulbGS M liCtf G great responsibility. To their aunts and great-aunts we owe it that Pur- tanism, in spite of everything that may be said to the contrary, still survives. The old New England conscience was a noble but sometimes exasperating thing. It is not desirable that it should live in all its bootless giving up of the joys of the flesh. But the self-sacrifice of the New England spinister, whom the older of us remember was not all ia vain in either it's practical results or its ethical outcome Many men and women are thankful all their lives to the aunt who always had time to do things. who could listen to their troubles and was full of sympathy in their hopes. The uses of the unmarried woman are many in the household Without giving up her own happiness as did those of a. former generation she may contribute to a very great extent to both the happiness and the good of others. "~
 But, as with any other product an exclusively home market is undesir- able. Massachusetts should be envied for her abundance of spinsters, but there should be some way of making , her share her surplus with other states that are less blessed as regards both quality and quantity. Common justice should devise some plan by ' which the surplus Bay State spinsters, like any other of line's necessaries--the surplus wheat of the Northwest or the surplus cotton of the South--may be properly attributed. That commorl- wealth has no exclusive rights. Pos sibly some ingenious person will sug- gest the right kind of legislation to bring about this desirable end.-proi- dence Journal.