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

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never connected right. The longer |
looked the more bitter I became,
Mibb.-yes thousands of them. Wom-
en- for wives indeed women for
pleasure, women for business, women
for careers,-plenty of women for
everything but to go to with weary
head and a heartache and get little
help and inspiration and strength for
the soul. Oh Mibb! You don't know it
don't realize it,-and few women
there are that do; but the crying need
of the age and the heart of men is
for that kind of women, the mat
ernal women, Mibb."
For an instant the woman forgot
her own misery in her stark surprise.
/ This from Dick Robinson.
"Years ago, Mibb, before women
went outside the home and into bust
ness and got all snarled up with fads
and isms, they didn't have much else
to occupy their attention but home
and folks and kids. All these folks
who want to "mend the status of
poor down-trodden and abused wo-
mankind say it was narrowing and
degrading and enslaving. But
Mibb, it did make mothers! The
business of womenfolks was to marry
and have homes and stay in those
ihomes and raise little kids. That
was their function in life and having
no other it was inbred generation
after generation into their bone. Look
at the homes of fifty or a hundred
years ago, Mibb. Look at some of
those on the Vermont hillsides back
around Paris. There's nothing like
those old homesteads today, Mibb
They've all gone with the 'old-fash-
'ioned' women that used to live in
them"
The woman wanted to say some
thing but she didn't know just what
it ought to be.
81 suppose industries that have
come in to make women's work cas-
ier and yet that have taken her at
the same time out of the home and
into business, are responsible, Mibb.
Perhaps I'm wrong in judging you
SO harshly. But oh Mibb, inside
deep inside there's the awful
heart-hunger in lot Of men, to
know what their grand daddies knew,
yet who never placed value on
it because it hadn't been denied them.
We're not raising families any more,
Nib. We're only having kids. We're
mot making homes. We're renting
place to live in and furnishing it with
stuff bought at n store. Everything's
shallow and transitory and unsatis-
factory and added. Half the time
we don't know what the matter is
with us we men of today. But
it's that we're getting away from ma
ture, away from the family idea,
away from solid substantial rug
ged foundations of living"
The man drew deep breath. For
ged foundations of living"
The man drew deep breath. For
a moment his jaw closed hard. Then
he went on
ooh l know we've got women that
are well-cnough willing to marry the
men, girls still fall in love with
the boys and the boys with the girls.
But | couldn't take clerk out Of
my office and put him half the time
in my engineering department and ex-
pect him to keep on improving as q
clerk following up the job, grow
ing more and more efficient in his
line when all the time I'm dis
tracing his energies and making him
neither one nor the other. And it's
much the same with you women folks,
Mibb. The girls today marry the
boys, true enough, and they rent a
place and furnish it and raise their
babies. But there's a hundred things
to attract them and distract them and
take them outside the home while at
the same time they try to keep the
home and gradually the home in
stinct of generations is being ironed
Que of them, Mibb. They want to do
a woman's work and at the same time
they want to do mans work and the
good Lord only knows what to call
the things they do. They're forget.
ting how to really truly mother,
Nib. 1 heard .dam-fool female the
other day get up on a soap-box and
yell that the child was the jailer of
the mother. AS if there was any rea-
son why it shouldn't be, Mibb?
And all mankind knows is that some
thing has been tipped over and upset
somewhere and he's all at sea and
doesn't know where he gets off or
what's coming. And pretty soon,
either Ell masse or as an individual
he commences to feel that he doesn't
give dam, Mibb. And when man
gets to the point that he doesn't give