The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1912-05-15
VICTORIOUS TEARS.
tfti one

With the merits or dement's of the school
Investigation we, not exactly have nothing TO
do. but have very little to say.
When militant women and manly men
throw down the gauntlet OF primary education,
it is time for all those not possessed of sky
scraper brows TO punch the button marked
Down" and take the elevator for the base
ment.
What We shall here have 10 say touches
this matter Of the school investigation at the
merest angle. We merely peep under the tent.
We only venture nose into a region in which
il has no license 10 ntrude itself. in the hope
that no angel will step on it, Our sermon,
so far as it shall be sermon. is upon the
Isuhiect of women's tears Our moral, in so
far as It shall not be immoral to criticise the
head of the School Board, is upon the shbiect
of precipitating them.
Tears in woman may mean either one of
three things and he is a wise man who knows
which one OF those things they typfy: they
may mean the despair OF the woman bereft of
her all which is the thing she loves best;
they may mean fury that, for want OF dag
and it is wonderful how often reflection shows
that they mean just this, the feminine club on
the masculine skull in order that the weaker
may prove the stronger. and woman gain her
way. No map who has ventured around
where the presence of women give the inn
il pulse to keep on living but knows that when a
woman cries. she wins Tears from woman
I hmm zar IT.
woman be attractive-they end the argument.
When the Chairman of the School Board de-
iliberatoly invited tears in the School Investi-
CATION, he injured his own case, whatever its
merits or dement's. When he undertook TO
point out to young woman teacher that in
report filed in the case she had committed an
error OF syntax, rhetoric. or something like
that he summoned the dews that are ant 10
drown his cause.-Ae surprised at the
lack OF diplomacy in the Chairman We can
cope with women. so long as they keep dry
eyes: when irrigation is complete We are one
and all helpless before the food One of the
practical objections TO womans suffrage is that
no law preventing the giving of salt water
baths 10 male voters on election day could
/ posSipl! pc enforced. As a French writer
wisely says, women on such occasions weep
without wiping their eyes, TO save them from
being red, When the storm has passed and
the sun shines, there is no way of telling what
has happened.
Seriously the Chairman of the School
Board failed in certain Difference which the
people Of this. State, delight to peapefatatt, III
their attitude toward women. Anyone who
writes much, or rapidly, who talks frequently
and at length, knows with what.fatal ease the
slight error creeps either into the written
word or the delivered utterance TO CRASH an
Instance of this sort in the attempt 10 discom4
lit woman teacher is to lose all sense of Dip
lomatic' direction. IF the teacher In cues
ZION u.s. Pot. competent IL ~-as the sohoo,
Boards duty TO know it, and to apply the
remedy. II she is competent ii was cruelty TO
attempt to humiliate her in public by making
1t appear that she is not so
The investigating committee took the right
course when il ruled out the offending oues-
ton.
The Chairman OF the Board was properly
served when he was, so 10 speak beaten over
the head with sprinkling pot