The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-04-26

They simply eked out an existence un- Her masculine rule that was nothing short of barbaric thralldom, said q noted woman suffragist a few years ago in public address. Now I cannot help feeling that such statements are insults, not only to the generation at which they are aimed, but 10 their liv- ing descendants. And yet constantly do we hear certain types of platform women indulging in these reflections. We have only to talk to some lady of the old school to ascertain how wide of the truth are these rapid remarks. have never yet sat in the presence of one of those white-capped and gold spectacled, sunny-souled women who years ago forgot what l have still to learn, but the question has come to my mind whether, after all, woman, as a whole, was not happiec in those days than are those of her sex in this more electric age of ours. The conditions of life were simpler and so was the work of woman. She had but one sphere, and how beautifully and completely she filled it. those of us know best who have the memory of a God-lille woman for q grandmother or an agei mother Woman was content in those days, these old ladies have told me to leave to men the work of men, and, in con- quence, she was always seen at her best and never to her disadvantage.
 She sought not for the ballot, be- cause she knew lnstinctively that it troc 1OF 1n Fo. In 1e. I.A lieved in her God first, then in her husband, her chiTlren and her home, and she lived her womanhood. She never unsexed herself; she was ever what her Creator intended she should be: X woman, q wife and a mother She dfI not give so much thought to the higher education of woman, be- cause she believed more firmly in a lower education-that of the. heart bothered herself about "woman's S rights" because she had all the rights she wanted
 Yet the mind of the platform prc~ elaimer of 'woman's rights" of to-day this woman of the past is a nonentity to be pointed to as simply "eking out an extstance' and having lived under rule. of a barbaric thralldon. And why?
 The fact is, when we come to look at the matter from common sense view, the woman of to-day has changed very little from the woman of yesterday, so to speak. We like to refer to the mod ern woman as if she was something new or unique, and differing very widely from her sister before her But how and in what respect is she differ ent? Some women are different, but that is a matter for pity rather than for congratulation. But taking wo- man as a whole, and In what has she changed? One would imagine, from some things that we read and hear, that the Creator gave to 1924 one sort of woman and to 1907 another sort But there is no evidence that He made the one different from the other. New types have come up as unpicturesque as, fortunately, their number is few. But womanhood is precisely the same to-day as it was in the time of Eve: different only in minor respects, but exactly the same in the best qualities that indelibly proclaim the true wo- man. She has broadened intellectually. True, but so has man and we never hear of the modern man as being creature radically different from his predecessor by a century's length, and yet he has changed just as much Con- ditions of life have altered just as the conditions of century hence will vary from those of to-day. But the woman of 1904 will not be different in her in stinctive qualities of womanhooi from her sister of to-day, any more than will the man of that period be different from the man or the present.