MASCULINE AND FEMININE.
There are men who suppose they have all the annoyances. They say it is the
store that ruffles the disposition; but if they could only stay at home as
do their wives, and sisters, and daughters, they would be, all the time,
sweet and fair as a white pond lily. Let some of the masculine lecturers on
placidity of temper try for one week the cares of the household and the
family. Let the man sleep with a baby on one arm all night, and one ear
open to the children with the whooping-cough in the adjoining apartment.
Let him see the tray of crockery and the cook fall down stairs, and nothing
saved but the pieces. Let the pump give out on a wash-day, and the stove
pipe, when too hot for handling, get dislocated. Let the pudding come out
of the stove stiff as a poker. Let the gossiping gabbler of next door come
in and tell all the disagreeable things that neighbors have been saying.
Let the lungs be worn out by staying indoors without fresh air, and the
needle be threaded with nerves exhausted. After one week's household
annoyances, he would conclude that Wall street is heaven and the clatter of
the Stock Exchange rich as Beethoven's symphony.
We think Mary of Bethany a little to blame for not helping Martha get the
dinner. If women sympathize with men in the troubles of store and field,
let the men also sympathize with the women in the troubles of housekeeping.
Many a housewife has died of her annoyances. A bar of soap may become a
murderous weapon. The poor cooking stove has sometimes been the slow fire
on which the wife has been roasted. In the day when Latimer and Ridley are
honored before the universe as the martyrs of the fire, we do not think the
Lord will forget the long line of wives, mothers, daughters and sisters who
have been the martyrs of the kitchen.
Accompanying masculine criticism of woman's temper goes the popular
criticism of woman's dress.
A convention has recently been held in Vineland, attended by the women who
are opposed to extravagance in dress. They propose, not only by formal
resolution, but by personal example, to teach the world lessons of economy
by wearing less adornment and dragging fewer yards of silk.
We wish them all success, although we would have more confidence in the
movement if so many of the delegates had not worn bloomer dress. Moses
makes war upon that style of apparel in Deuteronomy xxii. 5: "The woman
shall not wear that which pertaineth unto man." Nevertheless we favor every
effort to stop the extravagant use of dry goods and millinery.
We have, however, no sympathy with the implication that women are worse
than men in this respect. Men wear all they can without interfering with
their locomotion, but man is such an awkward creature he cannot find any
place on his body to hang a great many fineries. He could not get round in
Wall street with eight or ten flounces, and a big-handled parasol, and a
mountain of back hair. Men wear less than women, not because they are more
moral, but because they cannot stand it. As it is, many of our young men
are padded to a superlative degree, and have corns and bunions on every
separate toe from wearing shoes too tight.
Neither have we any sympathy with the implication that the present is
worse than the past in matters of dress. Compare the fashion plates of the
seventeenth century with the fashion plates of the nineteenth, and you
decide in favor of our day. The women of Isaiah's time beat anything now.
Do we have the kangaroo fashion Isaiah speaks of--the daughters who walked
with "stretched forth necks?" Talk of hoops! Isaiah speaks of women with
"round tires like the moon." Do we have hot irons for curling our hair?
Isaiah speaks of "wimples and crisping pins." Do we sometimes wear glasses
astride our nose, not because we are near-sighted, but for beautification?
Isaiah speaks of the "glasses, and the earrings, and the nose jewels." The
dress of to-day is far more sensible than that of a hundred or a thousand
years ago.
But the largest room in the world is room for improvement, and we would
cheer on those who would attempt reformation either in male or female
attire. Meanwhile, we rejoice that so many of the pearls, and emeralds, and
amethysts, and diamonds of the world are coming in the possession of
Christian women. Who knows but that the spirit of ancient consecration may
some day come upon them, and it shall again be as it was in the time of
Moses, that for the prosperity of the house of the Lord the women may bring
their bracelets, and earrings, and tablets and jewels? The precious stones
of earth will never have their proper place till they are set around the
Pearl of Great Price.