The Saint Paul globe., 1905-01-17
WOMEN ARE ABLE
TO. GUARD SECRETS
Experience Proves Adage of
Ages to Be Only Idle
Talk

Once in a while there is man who
seems free of the popular prejudices
about women; those old moss-grown
ISLANDERS which have been repeated SO
p often that they have really become
traditions. Women are great takers,
they cannot keep a secret, are not re-
liable and all the rest of it. Nine men
out of ten do not doubt these asser-
tions, having heard them repeated SO
often but the writer happened to run
across a man recently who has either
outgrown them, or was always free of
them. Women keep secrets" said he,
Il should think they could! Why, al
most any woman knows secrets enough
to blow up the town. Women can
keep secrets better than man any
time. Suppose some woman should
+. tell what she knows about the family
of some friend; or what she knows
about a friends husband. Or what
. she knows, perhaps, about some other
woman"
Now. of course making due allow
ance for the fact that the man who
said that is an unusually nice one, and
that perhaps his experience of his own
Womanllind has been a particularly
pleasant one, still if one thinks of it
there is much truth in what he said.
OF course 1t goes without saying that
many a man can keep a secret and
should he tell what he knows, or has
experienced, he too might blow up the
town, but when it is admitted that
most women can be close -mouthed, it
is such an important announcement
on the part of man that it should be
called to the attention of Mrs. Char
lotte Perkins Gilman at once. For the
latter needs to have her weakening
faith in man strengthened. Mrs. Gill
man seems to take particular pleasure
in belittling men in print and telling
how the world was made for women,
and yet the lady in question up to
date has had several husbands. Some
representative feminine body should
go to her and say that as soon as she
stops marrying they will take her seri-
ously, but so long as she acquires hus-
band after husband, her abuse of mas
culinity in general seems somewhat
forced. In order to abuse them with
consistency Sister Gilman should
eschew the society of men.
But when we think of what the nice
man said about women and secrets we
will have to admit its truth. For many
woman, married or unmarried, often
stumbles upon domestic secrets, or is
made the repository of them, but it
would never occur to her to tell A
chance remark is made which may re-
veal something she is never supposed
to know, and she will quietly put it
away in her memory and never, never
tell. A real gentlewoman will never ap-
pear to hear what was not intended for
her ear. nor will she see what was OBJ
viously not intended for her to see.
Much of the trouble in this world
comes because there are those for
whom the above rules either are dead
letters, or they are persons devoid of
gentle instincts If casual word Is
said which reveals, let us say, some
domestic unhappiness, the tactful, well
bred woman will never take advantage
of that inadvertence. She may draw
her own conclusions; but keep them to
herself.
Now it is secret discovered in this
way which, if bruited abroad would do
untold harm, that is kept by women
and never told. Many a man will say
things to other women besides his
wife, which he would not care to have
the world know he said, but it is a very
strange kind of woman who will tell.
Just as man. if he is a gentleman,
will sacrifice everything, rather than
tell what some woman has said or done.
Men do not go about talking of their
love affairs, even men from whom lit
tie is expected in the way of right feel