The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-09

mental work; he rarely gets chance at Europe. or, If he does. is brought home by his womankind more tired than when he left, and if there happen to be mu- seums and art galleries in his town it is not to be expected that he will give his brief holidays to their study. Nor, for obvious reasons, does he seek the society of intellectual and widely informed men.
 "He is money making machine, pure and simple, and to come home ,after a tense day in the city and entertain his wife is putting rather a load on his shoulders"
 The good provider" attitude was at one time considered the ideal" and wife and offspring were satisfied.
 Mrs. Atherton is inclined to think that in those days women were happier, but times have changed, and women are cry ing for something more.
 To quote Mrs. Atherton again:
 When civilization gets ahead Of nature there's the devil to pay. It's notorious fact that women have fathers, and as a natural sequence they inherit some DOT
 
 tion bred leisure then came the sharpen ing effect of the association with other masculine brains. That is what did the mischief. If men in general had been as wise as the OrientaIs they would have shut up their wives with their children and servants, and never a book or a glimpse of the world Mark you it was mans error in the beginning, since he held the reins in his own hands, that is responsible for the present state of affairs He must, therefore, take the consequences, and to my mind he Is paying more heavily than the woman although she is paying heavily enough"
 "The average woman," Mrs. Atherton says, spends her time in wishing for scmething-she knows not what-prob- ably love or more clothes. These women in an imperfect world where nobody is happy, are wretched in the meanest way possible. They fight off ennui by rush ing off to bridge parties or suffrage meetings or any other fad of the hour They are secretly resentful of the sI- lence of their tired husbands at dinner, and resent the fact that they do not enjoy the fullness of love which their empty romantic hearts-or shall we be literal and say heads ?-so consistently crave" Mrs. Atherton takes very different view of the woman of talent" from that usually held
 This is her idea:
 Take the women of art, letters, music. science. the stage. They, too, may have their trials and disappointments; they may find man wanting in many respects, but at least they are not unhappy with the. petty discontent manner of the .wom- an who expends all her imagination upon her little self. And these women of tal- ent find an almost continual solace In the exercise of their talents which amply compensates them for mans shortcom- ings; I,might even say, a happiness which no mere mortal could give them' In the summing up,' Mrs. Atherton addresses her remarks to the individual thusly:
 "Well, man, having brought your civil ization to this lamentable pass. what are you going to do about 1t? The wom- en converted to suffrage fancy that the vote will cure every evil, but, although I am a believer in universal suffrage morc because the reverse is an absurdity and ~anachronism than for any other reason), the suffragists are not going to get the best of nature when armed with the ballot, any more than you have done. I see no solution but to educate