"Yes, dear friend, but similarly does he 'support' the servant who
does the same duties. He also gives her seven dollars every Monday
morning, or she leaves." Are we to suppose that a wife is a woman who
does general housework for board and clothes, with a few kind words
thrown in?
A German lady, whom we well knew, worked all the morning attending to
the comforts of her liege lord. In the dining room he was stretched
out in an easy chair, while the queen of his heart brushed and
repaired his clothes--yes, and blacked his boots! Doubtless for a
single kiss, redolent of beer and sausages, she would have pressed his
trousers. Kind words and the fragrant osculation had already saved him
three dollars at his tailor's.
By such gold-brick methods, dear friends, do men get good service
cheap. Would that we could do the same! Here, and gladly, we admit
masculine superiority.
Our short-sightedness, our weakness for kind words, our graceful
acceptance of the entire responsibility for the home, have chained us
to the earth, while our lords soar. After having worked steadily for
some six thousand years to populate the earth passably, some of us may
now be excused from that duty.
Motherhood is a career for which especial talents are required. Very
few women know how to bring up children properly. If you don't believe
it, look at the difference between our angelic offspring, and the
little imps next door! It is as unreasonable to suppose that all women
can be good mothers as it is to suppose that all women can sing in
grand opera.
And yet, let us hug to our weary hearts, in our most discouraged
moments, the great soul-satisfying truth that men, no matter what they
say or write, think that we are smarter than they are. Otherwise, they
would not expect of us so much more than they can possibly do
themselves.
In every field of woman's work outside the house, the same
illustration applies. They also think that we possess greater physical
strength. They chivalrously shield us from the exhausting effort of
voting, but allow us to stand in the street-cars, wash dishes, push a
baby carriage, and scrub the kitchen floor. Should we not be proud
because they consider us so much stronger and wiser than they?
Interruptions are fatal to their work, as the wife of even a business
man will testify.
What would have become of Spencer's _Data of Ethics_ if, while he was
writing it, he had two dressmakers in the house? Should we have had
_Hamlet_, if at the completion of the first act Mr. Shakespeare had
given birth to twins, when he had made clothes for only one?
The great charm of marriage, as of life itself, is its unexpectedness.
The only way to test a man is to marry him. If you live, it's a
mushroom; if you die, it's a toadstool!
Or, as another saying goes: "Happiness after marriage is like the soap
in the bath-tub; you knew it was there when you got in."
Man's clothes are ugly, but the styles change gradually. A judge on
the bench may try a case lasting two weeks, and his hat will not be
hopelessly behind the times when it is finished. A man can stoop to
pick up a fallen magazine without pausing to remember that his front
steels are not so flexible this year as they were last.
He is not distressed by the fear that some other man may have a suit
just like his, or that the neighbours will think it is his last year's
suit dyed.
We women fritter ourselves away upon a thousand unnecessary things.
We waste our creative energies and our inspired moments upon pursuits
so ephemeral that they are forgotten to-morrow. Our day's work counts
for nothing when tested by the standards of eternity. We are unjust,
not only to ourselves, but to the men who strive for us, for
civilisation must progress very slowly when half of us are dragged by
pots and pans.
A house is a material fact, but a home is a fine spiritual essence
which may pervade even the humblest abode. If love means harmony, why
not try a little of it in the kitchen? Better a perfect salad than a
poor poem; better a fine picture than an immaculate house.