The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-07-25
PRESENT UNREST AMONG THE WOMEN Advance Opinions of One Ger
 trude Atherton THE EDICT OF MAN That He Alone Shall Do the Wooing Affects the Mental and Moral
 Tone of the Race-Suffra-
 gists' Demands.
THE EDICT OF MAN

think there Is little doubt that this world-old statute that the man alone shall woo has more to do with keeping down the mental and moral tone of wom- on, with cultvating her ignoble talents for deceit and intrigue, than any of the other forces which she finds arrayed against her, says Gertrude Atherton in The Delineator for August. It Is not the softening influence of the matrimonial and maternal states that works so many miracles, but the abrupt removal of the necessity to practice a demoralizing self control, to appear something that she is not, to still much ugly anger and resent ment. I have known many girls. plenti- fully endowed with good looks and charm, to confess that they have '1ain awake nights scheming how to get that man." only, in nine cases out of ten, to find him, later on. quite unworth the trouble.
 We are all familiar with the selfishness, the slyness, the lack of real frankness, in what might be called the Threshold Girl-anywhere between 1T and 19 This is nothing worse than the mating in- stinct driving her blndly until she has learned to play her part with taste and tact. During that period she gropes about in her still childish brain for those qualities that will enable her to hold at least her own in the great game, and she is the more befuddled because of that curious tradition that girl must seem other than she Is.
 Of course. with only this old standard of femininity, and being still fluid and plastic, the poor things more often than not model themselves upon some favorite heroine of romance, and are only knocked into shape by those lndefatigable part ners Life and Time. Some of our west ern girls, 1t is true, have disposition to rush at a with both arms out stretched-one sees it constantly among the second-class hordes travelling In Eu- rope; and this infer, is the primitive im- pulse of almost primitive tribes to get what they want in the shortest possible time. But even these girls, when they are walking more thoughtfully in their twenties when they are young ladies', evolve far finer set of tactics; they lose the savagery of adolescence, and cultivate those qualities which, when persisted In long enough, make them more than match for any man.
 Leaving entirely out of the question the substantial Improvements demanded by the suffragists, and those Unbalanced children of their old age called suffrag- cites, there are certain more intimate dis advantages pertaining to the immemorial status of woman, which, unconsciously or otherwise, influence the thousands of girls that deliberately enter upon the inde- pendent life before man shall have a chance to marry, desert. neglect or bore them. It is possible that the woman never lived who was born without the in- otnct for romantic love, and its less TO- mantle sequels, marriage and maternity.
 Being the only hope of the race until science learns to manufacture estimable Frankensteins, every sort of woman, when young, is prone 70 the disease of love as to the microbous afflictions of childhood: but the sharpened intellects of the modern female teach her to ob- serve not only that indulgence in the primitive blessings Is often productive of a tame happiness at best, but that it is mere chance If she does not waste sev- eral years of her active youth waiting for some man to exert his inalienable right to woo and propose.
 A man may trample down barriers, make opportunities, persist, overwhelm, but a woman, with double the fascination and intellisence must either stoop to con femptible scheming or proudly bide her time as likely as not to miss her ono chance of happiness because circum- stances do not give her the opportunity to reveal herself to the kindred spirit.
 If she cannot pursue man as man pursues a woman when he wants her; If she has not the supreme attractions which bring man to woman's feet with flash of the eye, she can at least avoid the mean subtifuges of the hus- band-hunters. and lead life In which man as a love-factor is practically elim- mated. She can also enjoy much the same. privileges as men, until perhaps who knows Tone day she may meet in this larger, fuller life a congenial, many sided creature who wants something more than a reproduction of his grandmotner
 Rrinhf iftle WaIter.