The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1912-02-13
NOMANH)DD Of TODAY
An Essay Read Before the Woman's
Club of This City by Mrs.
s. II. Sisfrunk

| The historians are performing
/ long neglected duty when they go
back TO contemporary records and
| ask for the truth that has often been
! buried under the hate and prejudices
/ Of succeeding generations. The TO
mancer knows that he can most ef-
4 fectively bring out the beauty OF his
H heroine by placing a contrast at her
side-that the virtue of his heroine is
not appreciated until he has created
| a villain to keep her company. With
malice, pretense, or in obedience to
the same literary necessity, many
villains in history have been created,
and it is time now that justice be
done When Scott wrote the life of
Napoleon he consulted the tastes of
his readers. Shakespeare shows US
Richard as a crook-back, and so he
remains TO our minds eye, even
though his contemporaries assert
that he was not deformed, and only
so much of a murderer and tyrant
as fashion demanded and necessity
prescribed in his time So Nero is
not so black as he has been painted,
and the Borgias seldom poisoned ex
cept to escape the draught mixed for
themselves. If Lucretia were not so
beautiful as she has been painted,
neither was her character SO black.
Echoes of the great achievements of
woman's work in the world are con-
tinually reverberating through the
multiform efforts of this wonderful
twentieth century, and yet their
greatest and real accomplishments
are not much talked of, but their in
fuence is greatly felt.
In Shelly we find expressed our
ideal of the woman of today:
Frank beautiful and kind as the free
heaven,
Which rains fresh light and dew on
the wide earth.
From customs, evil faint exempt and
pure
Speaking the wisdom once they could
Looking emotions once they feared to
feel
And changed to all which once they
| dared not be:
Yet being now, making earth like
heaven"
In the volume of essays which have
been newly translated on the ''mor-
II
breaches the faith with which Eng
I lish readers were made familiar by
love and marriage, and as she at
tempts to trace the poetry there floats
i. before her always that beautiful pic
ture drawn by Shelly, crystalizine
the deepest and subtle perceptions oil
her
From California comes the report
that great and beautiful state, an en-
tree SO distinguished by it's dignity
that it must always be an honor tc
| American WOmanhood. 1t is this dig
| nified and gentle attitude toward the
worlds work in which she is taking
so large a part that is the most en-
couraging phase of the development
of femininity. 1t reveals an underly
ing current of culture and refinement
which for the last half century (since
the colleges and higher schools OF
learning have opened their doors tC
women), has been constantly aug
mented An army of young women
go to college each year, leaving the
farms and crude homes, with their
narrow limitations, for towns OF
crowded cities. In those places oil
high learning the principles of higher
culture are inculcated into their char
acter. Their tastes are refined and
they are given higher ideals, and are
taught how to think and how to apply
their thoughts. In time they come tc
, know that we'll developed body is a
successful basis for the operation of a
good mind. Outdoor life becomes a
habit, and they are led to realize that
in a happier existence the element OF
beauty must always have a part
Hundreds of young women leave
our colleges and universities each
year and scatter all over the United
States; some to homes beyond the
seas, others, perhaps, go back to the
, dear old farm home, where, in their
humble way, change of culture and
gentle refinement gradually takes
place throughout the community in
| which they live. Civics through our
land is an inspiration developed
through the instigation of American
women
England has twenty-seven reform
schools for boys and nine for girls
with sixty-eight industrial schools for