The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-04-02
CLASSIFIED DEPT

a damn, he isn't over-careful about
his relations in other matters. It's all
mixed-up and lamentable mess and
God only knows who's responsible.
But it's coming over al society, Mibb,
r.ore and more every year and
well, the kids that are growing up
today are showing it,
Again the woman did not know
what to say. She felt as if Dick Rob-
inson had waded off beyond her depth
and if she tried to follow him she
would founder. If she had been
where she had been thirty years be-
fore, up in Gold-Piece cabin, She
might have tried to follow him. But
she had dissipated the heritage that
had once been hers. She must pay
the penalty, the penalty of silence
silence more than the mere 81
lence of speech.
"Mibb," he concluded in hollow
voice, what this old world needs
today more than it ever needed it
before, isn't women to run business
and make governments and all that
rot. suppose it's all right in its way
to have women leavening up things a
trifle but they've gone and over
done it, Mibb; they're OVERRIDING it
already they need to get back to
first principles back to the good
old-fashioned family idea OF home in
terest and unselfiish devotion to the
heartaches of little kids and the solid
substantial fundamentals that the
family is the basis of society and
there's not place on Gods earth
where & man can learn to be a square
business man, decent citizen, ere
dit tolshis creator, that beats his
mothers knee, Mibb. Bring on your
damned old arguments about the up
lift of society and publication of
government and the refining influence
of women in business. Talk your
head off! That won't take from the
heart of a man the ache after some
thing he can't express the feeling
that he's all at sea somehow, or
it won't put into his soul the whole
some love and veneration and respect
that he had for his mother who was
a woman and wife first even if it
cost her her life and her reason.
Mothers? The worlds heartsick for
them, Mibb. God, I wish | had one :.
right noww
Finally the woman spoke.
"Well, don't suppose | can say any
thing on that score, Dick. Some
times I've felt something was wrong
in my own life, I've had some
fearfully lonely moments, DicL, when
| wondered if what the matter with
me was was"
eco ahead and say it!'' ordered The
man. "Its nothing to be ashamed
of! Kids !-that's it, isn't it? And
why didr't you have theta, do you
suppose IL pocr Herb had had three
or four kids he'd gone off the way
he did? Why didn't you nave them,
Mibb? Because Of the way you was
ing to save you from what she called
the drudgety of the home. know;
l remember She put pretty clothes
on you and did all she could to dis
courage you from becoming mother.
Why did she do it? Because she
wasn't a mother herself. Oh she
may have gone through hell and
brought you into the world. But
that's only an incident in mother
hood, Mibb. She wasn't living natur-
ally in her own home herself; she
was the pants and the checkbook and
the wageearnef Of your home-I re-
member how your dad sat around
Will Seaver's store in the old days
rather than smoke his pipe with his
feet on his own sitting-rook stove at
home. And you had motherhood and
homehood ironed out of you the same
as millions of young girls are getting
it ironed out of them today"
"Then you admit wasn't to blame
wholly, Dick"
"But, / hold it was up to you when
you reached maturity and age of
reason yourself, to correct the
trouble, just as it's up to the women
of today to do it. Lord, the men
can't do it; the women have got to
do it for themselves"
"But you'll admit that the drudgery
of the home is"
"Drudgery of the home hell
There's no drudgery of the home on
ly what women make for themselves.
There's drudgery everywhere. All of
us have got to sweat our clothes for
the things we make the world hand
over to US. Its all in the way you
Continued on page 81