Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-03-01

those populous fields of death. As conse
quence, hundreds of thousands of American
women married, not their true mates but the
contiguous makeshifts. Being superior to
their husbands, they have Internationally and
inevitably assumed command.
Another question in which DR.. Hall appears
to me to be in error is IN supposing that uni
forrnities agreeable to most women. l
maintain that the adventurous spirit IS high IN
women,-instance the number who have
threshed out to the Klondike, and the heroism
they have exhibited there. The difficulty is,
that any revolutionary trait IN woman Is
severely punished by public. disapprobatlon
Her docilitv is insisted upon from the day she
is born to the day of her death. Opprobrious
terms are invented for her when she develops
social, intellectual, or industrial courage.
Only when she exercises the abnegating Chris
tian virtues does she escape the dlsapproval
"sugary benignity!" l believe too that in
the souls of women quite as much as in the
souls of men do the fine passions of patriotism.
reform, compassion, and regeneratlng rehglon
abide; and, according to my observation, 1t
has been the acrid humor of the male that
frequently has punctured these emotions in
the women, and frustrated their intentions.
Not that all have been frustrated, by any
manner of means. In the city in which
have the honor to live, it is the women who
are the most diSlntereSted citizens.
l would not do anything to mitigate the
mere ramp, strut, and below of the male.
These dramatic demonstrations are his pre-
rogative. But maintain that our vivacious
feminine cackle is no more to be apologized for
than the other, irritating though 1t be to men.
Individually, there is deep and endless
warfare between women and men. Has it
been since the beginning! Very probably.
Modern philosophic thought has taken cog
nizance of it; the determination OF the men
of the universities to keep clear OF the women
is striking evidence OF it; it is revealed in
the antagonism of male employees toward
their feminine fellow workers; conversation
between women and women and between
men and men makes hourly confederation OF
it. They repealed by each other that
they are even unwilling to admit that they are
rivals. In the happiest homes, there is
covert irritation Each suspects the other of
selishness; to the woman, the man appears
imnobile, slow to adjust himself to circum-
stances, dull of comprehension, covertly brutal,
ridiculously pompous. To the man, the woman
appears immature and egotstical, excitable
and impractical, and either purveyor of
unmarketab Bile ideals or creature of illimitable
follies. At the bottom of this curious antagon-
isrH lies the fear on the part of each that he
will be enslaved by the other. -
DR.. Hall saws that women like service. Do
not men? Why, the ideal wife is at once the
spiritual guide, the efficient valet, the perfect
housekeeper and the glorifed doormat AS
for the ideal husband, he is no better, poor
wretch! He may growl like a tyrant; but in
reality he is white slave,-at his bravest and
freest, he is a COMPROMISED.
Ye who have tears may well prepare to
shed them at the sorry spectacle MAKE
who are ever at secret enmity, yet who
have not the heart to live without each other
we who are alternately attracted and repealed,
shared in a web of wild realities more re1ent-
less than that which wrapped the Lady of
Shalott.
Yes, admittedly, the women have somewhat
subdued the boys given to their charge. Under
their administration, education has taken on
many new phases. Among these-though far
from being the most signifcant-is the sub
stitution of moral suasion for DR.. Spank ter"
Perhaps we shall have a revival of the old
violence, mitigated. of course, by the greater
benevolence and understanding of the age and
by its better relation to children. But after
the men and the boys have got through with
their exchange of brisk brutalities, will they
really be any more courageous than thousands
of little women are being every day in the in
conspicuous rooms where their babes are born?
Will they possess themselves of higher code
of endurance, of fidelity, of loving honor, than
these women unconsciously exhibit in their
unrewarded drudgery, their abnegating self
limitation?
Finally, and by way of another question
may l not ask if there is not some confusion
between the Termination and the Christianiza-
ton of boys? Christian ideals and feminine
ideals appear to me to have great correspond
ence, and no one will deny that it is the women