The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-04-07

Women Match Wits for a Throne.
As contemporaneous as the --latest
social feud reported in the newspa-
pers. or gossiped about at dinner Ia
bIes. is this war of wits between two
women who lived more than twenty
five centuries ago They stand 1or-
ever for the two types of womanhood
one, Athaliah, the hard, cruel, am
bilious woman, eager for place and
power for herself; and the other
J ehosheba, the tender-hearted. child
loving, reVerent and kin-caring wO-
man, who risked her life in order to
save an infant nephew from the MUIR
derous power of her own step-mother.
Back of the boy who is the topical
center of this story stand the rival fig
ures of two women; as if to symbolic
that forever the boy problem is a
woman problem.
This Lesson reads like a motion pic
ture melodrama. The characters are
drawn in strong and vivid colors-the
royal adventures and the dauntless
heroine matching the most sensational
screen figures of our day. The scene
is lad in the southern kingdom of
Judah. The king, Ahaziah. had been
killed. His mother was Athaliah, a
daughter of Jezebel, the fierce heath
en- queen of Israel. If you want to
know what kind of woman a girl will
become, look at her mother; Athaliah
took after Jezebel in all the worst
byeword thruout the ages. She was
audacious, shrewd, calculating, relent-
less; and when her son died, the first
thought of this unnatural woman was
to seize the sovereignty for herself, by
destroying all the seeG royal. She
obtained the throne of Judah by the
simple and rather conventional expe-
dent of numbering all the rightful
heirs.
Rescuing the Baby Prince
or al A g
quickness and courage interviewed to
foil the evil woman's plot. A half
sister of the dead king and so a step
daughter of Athaliah, was Jehosheba,
wife of the priest Jehoida, a good Wo-
man and a patriot. and a worshiper Of
Jehovah. We may easily imagine the
family feud that had ragged between
her and the heather wife of her IA
Their, King Jehoram-
When the crisis rose, Jehosheba
acted. She was not the type to in
dulge either in idle fears or vain re-
grets. She knew the sort of woman
with whom she had to deal. and she
knew the deadly peril of her brothers
children. So with womanly compass
sion for an infant, she seized her
nephew, baby Joash, and fled with
him from the palace to the temple.
The text implies that she took him
from the very pile of the slain in the
royal nursery: as 1 have known Ar
menian children to be rescued from
beneath 8. heap of massacred dead.
With the connivance and cooperation
of a loyal nurse, the baby was borne
in secret and in safety TO the inner
dwellings of the temple compound.
Athaliah reigned over the land, and
did abominably, after the fashions of
the Tyrian Baal of whom her grand
father had been a priest She dwelt
in fancied security. never dreaming
that there lived, in the loving care of
a God fearing aunt, a representative
of the royal line, being prepared for
the hour of revelation and reign The
grounds for hope in our present trou-
bled time-that. all unheeded by the
arrogant forces of evil which hold
sway as If their power were sure and
abiding, there are being made ready
for tomorrow's thrones n royal line
of youth, trained in goodness and pa
triotism, who are the vindication of
divine providence and of the wisdom
of woman's ideals.
Frank Words About Women.
Now that women have the ballot,
and are already holding public office,
outside of the home, we may as well
face candidly all that is suggested by
the story of Queen Arhaliah. She was
not a representative of all woman
hood, but she stands for the ugly
truth, which is a tragedy for young
men to have to learn, that there are
some women who do not live by the
standards which chivalry and Chris
tianity have set up for the sex There
is no denying, either, that the world is
just now Witnessing among young wO-
men a drift toward Athaliah stan
dardS OF selfishnesSS and power and
place and indulgence. 1t is~a curious
inversion of woman's highest rights
but the hard, cold, calculating, schem- |
ing place-huntin type or women is
now with us.
A few days ago was chatting with !
4 business man who is sojourning in |
City. and he told me that, |
on the preceding day he had spent a |
couple of hours sitting in the sun on |
one of the seats of a public pavilion, |
where he could not avoid hearing the |
talk of other persons, mostly women, |
who seated themselves near him for a !
few minutes at time. Il tell you" he |
declared earnestly, 1T was simply |
awful, Literally all of those women, |
and some of them were old enough !
TO be grandmothers, were talking |
scandal and intrigue and how some
women were carrying on with men;
and how to get money and what to |
spend it for-there was never a word |
of simple human kindness or religion |
Or idealism.
by contrast It all made me think |
Of my own mother and grandmother !
My mother died when I was six vet
have never got away from her call |
ing me to her bedside to make sure ]
hat 1 had memorized the One-hun- |
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Psalm. which |
was her bequest to me. And with my I
grandmother who reared me. always /
associate the First Psalm and parts of /
he Observation-Disclosures nete enth- Are /
-hese women on the boardwalk, and |
whom we see in our big cities, going /
10 raise children on the Bible? I'm I
not as much concerned for these fool !
sh women themselves. as for the next /
generation"
The Vogue of the Beauty Doctor"
My friend, a man of the world, was 4
leeply aroused because so many wo- /
men are going the Athaliah way. AS 4
he old apothegm says, It's worse /
han a crime-it's blunder" In this /
mad race for beauty and pleasure |