The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-02-25

risks and have less and less domestic
life, with the frequent result of com
mercial, physical and moral disaster:
It is not magnifying the number or
Jezebels to say that the ill-directed
ambitions and unwise counsel OF
women are potent factors in the pres
ent social unrest. Thank God, the
world is full of good women; but it
is not the part of discretion to ignore
the other kind. The worst of all the
consequences of our rather historical
and retrospective age is the unset
Ting of the status of woman. To say
this is not to commit the indiscretion
of intruding an opinion upon the po-
litical suffrage for women; it is
merely to record a potent fact con-
corning society in general. Woman
TODAY is a question her place is
no longer fixed and taken for grant
ed as it was. Her entrance into the
wage-earning realm, her higher edu-
cation her emancipation" with it's
accompanying ceaseless agitation has
quite unsettled the foundations upon
which she once stood, assured. Even
the reverence and religion which
marked the woman of generation or
two ago, have disappeared from the
general makeup of the modern pro
pressive'' woman.
A Cruel Plot.
Things always go wrong when
estate transaction was ar affair of
Ahab's. 1t had failed, and he accepted
the fact, though with i'll grace. He
had a sense of justice which recog-
nized Naboth's rights, even while he
resented his ungraciousness
When Jezebel entered the case, she
obeyed her feelings and not her judg-
ment. Woman-WiSe, she resented what
had depressed her husband Lacking
the judicial sense, she began to plot
to accomplish the end desired. ''by
hook or by crook" Abstract justice
and Naboth's claims alike meant lit
tie to her We may call this devotion
to Ahab, it was not. Rather let us
call it blind and cruel selfshness.
True love always puts the great
claims of duty and truth above itself.
AS says the poets line:
81 could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more"
Jezebel tried David's trick. of elm
mating the troublesome factor in the
case. AS the great king had encom-
passed Uriah's death, so she would
put Naboth out of the way. The plot
she formed, whereby this stiff backed
lover of justice was made tC appear
the enemy of the king and of law,
was particularly hideous. The fashion
of removing the man with a trouble
Consider the men whom the Jezebels
of "big business have slain; and OF
those others who 1.-The exigencies of
politics. have sacrificed. There is a
well known man whose footsteps ran
across in Syria recently where he has
been travelling in a vain effort to
forget his sorrow, who is being pre-
maturely broken by the public shame
of an official miscarriage of states
manship; he is the scapegoat of an
plot.
An ugly light is thrown upon the
times by the fact that Jezebel found
willing fellow conspirators in the high
officials of the capital as she sought
Naboth's death. The men who cast
the stones, the sons of Belial who
swore falsely against the innocent
man, the elders and mobiles who
worked the machinery which put him
on trial. all had a share in the re-
sponsibility for the murder, but the
woman behind it all had the great
est share.
The Man With Backbone
Into the grewsome story suddenly
appears our dramatic friend Elijah,
the prophet. He must have seemed the
incarnation of the justice of Jehovah
to covetous Ahab. The latter had
the fruits of his success. earned by
woman's wicked wiles Then came
Elijah also. and his ' appearance
evoked the cry, Hast thou found me.
o mine enemy?'' That is the way the
burglar feels when the policeman I'M
expectedly appears on the scene
Were Ahab in possession of a clear
conscience he would have welcomed
the prophet; his sin made him fear
and hate the enemy of the good.
Scarcely had he entered upon his
new acquisition, barely was the cup
of possession at his lips, than it was
dashed down again. A word of dire
doom was on the prophets lips. I'm
the place where the dogs licked the
blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy
blood. even thine. And of Jeze-
bel also spoke Jehovah, saying, The
dogs shall eat Jezebe1 by the ram
parts of Jezreel.''