Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1909-03-05

With joy and love what mingled awe,
Before this little sumberer. when
The tuWerIIke face we dimly saw,
moment there we hung appalled,.
Fearing to read in life's long scrolls
out of the Vastly deep of souls
Perhaps the Lord of Being bent
That instant to our sudden prayer
For still the low breath came and went,
But peace and bless ne filled the air.
Harriet Prescott SpoHord, IN Harper :
Bazaar
Unmarried Women Appreciated
The striking phrase race suicide in
vented by President Roosevelt to empha-
size the Importance of marriage and par
cntage as social ideal, may possibly
have proved useful in some cases, where
conditions of domestic happiness were
suitable and encouragement was needed.
But it has also been harmful as en-
couraging hasty and injudicious unions,
where material and moral adaptions
were lacking, and has tended to intensi-
fy narrow popular prejudice which
regards an unmarried life, especially
for women, as necessarily a failure.
On this. as on most other social ques-
tons, there is another side which needs
10 be considered. We are glad that
Prcsident-elect Taft has given it express
siCn In an address to the women stu
dents of the Georgia state normal school
at Atlanta, a few days ago, he said to
the prospective women teachers:
Il hope that you Will not regard
matrimOny as necessary. | think that
the secret of most domestic infelicity
is in the fact that young women think
that unless they are married their lives
are not success. As matter of fact,
| think the reverse is often true" He
called to mind the sweet, self-sacrihcing
maiden aunts he had known, and boldly
expressed his disbelief that ''all such
women would have been better off if
they had married"
In this connection it is a fact worthy
of consideration that in the more civ
lized and progressive communities, for
thousands of years, celibacy has been
regarded as a condition of the highest
possible human life. Even in Pagan
Rome. the "Vestal Virgins" were OBJ
jects of popular veneratiOn, while, in
the Catholic type of Christianity, priests
and nuns have been and still are pledged
to celibacy. as inseparable from life
especially devoted to religion"
Certainly, in works of philanthropy,
selfSacrihce and social reform, unmar-
ried women. in modern society, have been
and are honorably conspicuous and al
most indispensable. Success and failure
depend mainly on personal character
and achievement. No intelligent per-
son would say that Florence Nightingale,
Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, Frances
Willard, or Jane Adams have been fail
ures!
George Washington is deservedy idol
lied as ''the father of his country" al
though he was not the father of chill
dren. The same newspaper which re-
ported Mr.. Taft's address, announces
the decease. at Ogden, of Lorin Farr,
aged 81. one of the founders of Utah,
as having been ''the husband of seven
wives and a progenitOr of 300 living
children, grandchildren and great-grand-
children" Which of the two lives is
most worthy of honor? Is Washington
or Farr better entitled to be regarded as
success Y'-W Oman's Journal.
-O+:.O-
Play Necessary Part of Life.
The importance accorded play in the
IDEAL social programme of latter day
philanthropists and scientific inveStiga-
tors may surprise some of those other
wise Well-informed persons who have
never been accustomed to regard recre-
alton as a serious factor in the develop
ment of character. To many the recon-
mendation, so emphatically insisted upon
by the most enlightened advocates OF
public Fairgrounds. that directors be
assigned to even the smallest of them
seems one that would involve a futile
waste of the taxpayers money, and yet
the experience of those familiar with
the movement has convinced them that
children left to themselves are incapa-
BILE of extracting either the same physc
al good or the same pleasure from their
play that they could if properly directed
III 1t, and therefore, that without pro-
tclent leaders the purpose of establish
ing these places of recreation is largely
nnllihed 1t is the appreciation of this
fact that in recent years has led so
many people of means to engage college
men and women to direct the play of
their little sons and daughters, and GER
talnly those who never trouble them
selves to supervise III ally way the forms
OF recreation INDUCED in by their chill
dren are missing great opportunities for
their proper physical and moral devel-
ODment.
A coming recognition of the natural
desire of the human being for play. and
of the frequent inability of the individ-
ual, even when adult life is reached, to
provide for himself IN his respect, is
indicated by the efforts of a few ruraa
communities to secure properly qualified
travelling directors to develop amuse-
ment features in their localities, and
thus to interest the young people suf
iciently to stay the drift from the farm
to the city; for even employers of
skilled labor in the smaller towns are
often much put out because desirable
NoAhAAItu uGtpHIt 50 uISEOultultu viii
the lack of opportunity for evening di-
version that they cannot be induced to
remain.
The Puritan view of life, as we'll as
that of Christian theology, until very
recently has frowned upon recreation
teaching that the pleasure impulse is a
discreditable longing which should be
Crucifed-and the outcome has been that
the church. in the days of its greatest
influence, not only lost a golden oppor-
unity to direct amusement. but actually
forced it upon secular interests. not al
ways governed by worthy motives, to
the detriment of thousands of young
men and women who cannot now be
reached by the settlements or churches
of the great cities. and who frequent
dance halls and cheap theaters where
the physical and spiritual atmosphere
IS often deadly. Fortunately. q group Of
enlightened phianthropists has recently
undertaken a scientific solution of this
phase of the girl problem. and there is
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