The true Democrat. [volume] (Bayou Sara [La.]) 1892-1928, 1914-04-18
A MOTHER IN |SRAEL"
GIVES SOUND ADVICE

most of the time in her big arm chair
by the window, where the entire neigh
borhood went for sound advice and
words of good cheer. They called her
Mother and Grandma; a few of them
spoke of her as Madam Wilton and
thought of the rambling farm house
where she lived, cared for by her
granddaughter, as if it was the palace
of a queen.
One day all the young girls of the
Valley gathered there, and the talk
turned upon woman suffrage. (She
had been carried to the polls that week,
rejoicing greatly because at last she
could vote.) This wise woman said:
81 think that this age you girls belong
to is going to require very much more
from it's men and women than just try
ing to vote right. 1t will ask for more
responsibility from both men and
women than any of you yet realize.
"The other day | was thinking about
what married life meant for us, seven
ty years ago, especially on the house
keeping side. | was married to a good
man when was only sixteen, and"
She stopped minute.
1.-THE hardest little thing, girls, was
that gave up, as everyone else did in
those days, as matter of course, near
ly every one of my own bringing-ups
about-well, food, for instance. My
own family and my husbands family
differed very greatly in the sort of
food they liked and in methods of pre-
pairing it, so as a matter of course,
put aside all my own ways and at once
began to cook the heavy meats and
pastries that my husband liked.
gave up having fruits, salads, and many
of the more delicate vegetables
Every good woman since the world
began, desiring to make happy home
for her man has done most of the Civ
ing UP in little things, because it has
been expected. The man has never
learned to meet her half way in these
things"
The old woman looked around the
circle of young faces and saw complete
assent there. She went on: "The new
feminism means that the time must
come when both men and women, hav-
ing fullest freedom and ownership of
themselves, grow up without these
spider-webs of little but Interchangeable
likes and dislikes. Once when | was
travelling | saw a man in his own home
throw his boiled eggs across the floor
because, as he said to his wife, they
were left too soft. You know how
like 'em!' he shouted. She cooked
more, without word-he was the
father of her children. Then she wash
ed off the floor. That was about sixty
years ago, but lots of people to-day
have never once recognized the fact
that no person of either sex ought to
become the slave Of these little per-
sonal habits. The new freedom that
the President talks about means in
part that instead of Women, obey
your husbands in all things for this is
right, we shall have You wives and
husbands, help each other in little
things as well as in large ones; you
are, first of. all, human beings, and
equally responsible.
One of the girls remarked: "It's Olive
Schreiner's Dream in a Desert; the
woman falls prone, under too great a
burden made up of little nagging
things; the human race can not go
forward as it ought until men and
women are in all respects co-workers. y
Eyes" MADAM Wilton said, tits there
and in ten thousand other books. But
we need never fear that love and mar
rage, home and companionship, will
mean less than they do now" Spoke
one of the young women who sat in the
|circle, sat so close to the older woman
that the strong brown hand was clasp
led over the thin, white, bIue-veined
one, "Yes, dear, yes. They'll mean
more, a thousand times; they will lie
on bedrock foundation" She laugh
led little. Its just give and take;
it's to make less of the material items
and more of the spiritual ones. 1t
isn't to do like the Randall girl, I'D on
Mission Peak. They say she took the
other route; said she wanted French
pastries for dessert every night and
got them by mail from CONNECTION.
er's. She told poor Jim that he ought
to eat them with her, or be mean. He
stood it for the honeymoon, and then
things broke. She went home cross
lots with her sunbonnet in her hand
/ and hn went IN hic ,,,ofhar,c for eo,.,<