<h2 style="color: red;">Concerning Women</h2>
<p>In order to be happy, a woman needs only a
good digestion, a satisfactory complexion,
and a lover. The first requirement being
met, the second is not difficult to obtain, and
the third follows as a matter of course.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Nagging</div>
<p>He was a wise philosopher who first considered
crime as disease, for women are
naturally sweet-tempered and charming. The
shrew and the scold are to be reformed only
by a physician, and as for nagging, is it not
allopathic scolding in homeopathic doses?</p>
<p>A well woman is usually a happy one, and
incidentally, those around her share her content.
The irritation produced by fifteen
minutes of nagging speaks volumes for the
personal influence which might be directed
the other way, and the desired result more
easily obtained.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Diversions</div>
<p>The sun around which woman revolves is
Love. Her whole life is spent in search of it,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></SPAN></span>
consciously or unconsciously. Incidental
diversions in the way of "career" and "independence"
are usually caused by domestic
unhappiness, or, in the case of spinsters, the
fear of it.</p>
<p>If all men were lovers, there would be no
"new woman" movement, no sociological
studies of "Woman in Business," no ponderous
analyses of "The Industrial Condition of
Women" in weighty journals. Still more
than a man, a woman needs a home, though
it be but the tiniest room.</p>
<p>Even the self-reliant woman of affairs who
battles bravely by day in the commercial arena
has her little nook, made dainty by feminine
touches, to which she gladly creeps at night.
Would it not be sweeter if it were shared by
one who would always love her? As truly
as she needs her bread and meat, woman
needs love, and, did he but know it, man
needs it too, though in lesser degree.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Verity
and the
Vision</div>
<p>Lacking the daily expression of it which is
the sweet unction of her hungry soul, she
seeks solace in an ideal world of her own
making. It is because the verity jars upon her
vision that she takes a melancholy view of life.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>One of woman's keenest pleasures is sorrow.
Her tears are not all pain. She goes
to the theatre, not to laugh, but to weep.
The clever playwright who closes his last
scene with a bitter parting is sure of a large
clientage, composed almost wholly of women.
Sad books are written by men, with an eye to
women readers, and women dearly love to
wear the willow in print.</p>
<p>Women are unconscious queens of tragedy.
Each one, in thought, plays to a sympathetic
but invisible audience. She lifts her daily
living to a plane of art, finding in fiction,
music, pictures, and the stage continual reminders
of her own experience.</p>
<p>Does her husband, distraught with business
cares, leave her hurriedly and without the
customary morning kiss? Woman, on her
way to market, rapidly reviews similar instances
in fiction, in which this first forgetting
proved to be "the little rift within the lute."</p>
<p>The pictures of distracted ladies, wild as to
hair and vision, are sold in photogravure by
countless thousands—to women. An attraction
on the boards which is rumoured to be
"so sad," leads woman to economise in the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></SPAN></span>
matter of roasts and desserts that she may go
and enjoy an afternoon of misery. Girls
suffer all their lives long from being taken to
mirthful plays, or to vaudeville, which is unmixed
delight to a man and intolerably cheerful
to a woman.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Woman
and
Death</div>
<p>Woman and Death are close friends in art.
Opera is her greatest joy, because a great
many people are slaughtered in the course of
a single performance, and somebody usually
goes raving mad for love. When Melba sings
the mad scene from <i>Lucia</i>, and that beautiful
voice descends by lingering half-notes from
madness and nameless longing to love and
prayer, the women in the house sob in sheer
delight and clutch the hands of their companions
in an ecstasy of pain.</p>
<p>In proportion as women enjoy sorrow, men
shrink from it. A man cannot bear to be
continually reminded of the woman he has
loved and lost, while woman's dearest keepsakes
are old love letters and the shoes of a
little child. If the lover or the child is dead,
the treasures are never to be duplicated or replaced,
but if the pristine owner of the shoes
has grown to stalwart manhood and the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></SPAN></span>
writer of the love letters is a tender and
devoted husband, the sorrowful interest is
merely mitigated. It is not by any means
lost.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">"The
Eternal
Womanly"</div>
<p>Just why it should be considered sad to
marry one's lover and for a child to grow up,
can never be understood by men. There are
many things in the "eternal womanly" which
men understand about as well as a kitten
does the binomial theorem, but some mysteries
become simple enough when the leading
fact is grasped—that woman's song of life
is written in a minor key and that she actually
enjoys the semblance of sorrow. Still, the
average woman wishes to be idealised and
strongly objects to being understood.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">"Tears,
Idle
Tears"</div>
<p>Woman's tears mean no more than the
sparks from an overcharged dynamo; they
are simply emotional relief. Married men
gradually come to realise it, and this is why a
suspicion of tears in his sweetheart's eyes
means infinitely more to a lover than a fit of
hysterics does to a husband.</p>
<p>We are wont to speak of woman's tenderness,
but there is no tenderness like that of a
man for the woman he loves when she is tired<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></SPAN></span>
or troubled, and the man who has learned
simply to love a woman at crucial moments,
and to postpone the inevitable idiotic questioning
till a more auspicious time, has in his
hands the talisman of domestic felicity.</p>
<p>If by any chance the lachrymal glands were
to be dried up, woman's life would lose a
goodly share of its charm. There is nothing
to cry on which compares with a man's
shoulder; almost any man will do at a critical
moment; but the clavicle of a lover is by
far the most desirable. If the flood is copious
and a collar or an immaculate shirt-front can
be spoiled, the scene acquires new and distinct
value. A pillow does very well, lacking
the shoulder, for many of the most attractive
women in fiction habitually cry into pillows—because
they have no lover, or because the
brute dislikes tears.</p>
<p>When grief strikes deep, a woman's eyes
are dry. Her soul shudders and there is a
hand upon her heart whose icy fingers clutch
at the inward fibre in a very real physical
pain. There are no tears for times like these;
the inner depths, bare and quivering, are
healed by no such balm as this.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>A sudden blow leaves a woman as cold as a
marble statue and absolutely dumb as to the
thing which lies upon her heart. When the
tears begin to flow, it means that resignation
and content will surely come. On the contrary,
when once or twice in a lifetime a
man is moved to tears, there is nothing so
terrible and so hopeless as his sobbing grief.</p>
<p>Married and unmarried women waste a
great deal of time in feeling sorry for each
other. It never occurs to a married woman
that a spinster may not care to take the troublous
step. An ideal lover in one's heart is
less strain upon the imagination than the
transfiguration of a man who goes around in
his shirt-sleeves and dispenses with his collar
at ninety degrees Fahrenheit.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Unknown
Country</div>
<p>If fiction dealt pleasantly with men who are
unmindful of small courtesies, the unknown
country beyond the altar would lose some of
its fear. If the way of an engaged girl lies
past a barber shop,—which very seldom has
a curtain, by the way,—and she happens to
think that she may some day behold her beloved
in the dangerous act of shaving himself,
it immediately hardens her heart. One<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></SPAN></span>
glimpse of one face covered with lather will
postpone one wedding-day five weeks. Many
a lover has attributed to caprice or coquetry
the fault which lies at the door of the "tonsorial
parlour."</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Other
Feminine
Eyes</div>
<p>A woman may be a mystery to a man and
to herself, but never to another woman.
There is no concealment which is effectual
when other feminine eyes are fixed upon one's
small and harmless schemes. A glance at a
girl's dressing-table is sufficient for the intimate
friend—she does not need to ask questions;
and indeed, there are few situations in
life in which the necessity for direct questions
is not a confession of individual weakness.</p>
<p>If fourteen different kinds of creams and
emollients are within easy reach, the girl has
an admirer who is fond of out-door sports and
has not yet declared himself. If the curling
iron is kept hot, it is because he has looked
approval when her hair was waved. If there
is a box of rouge but half concealed, the girl
thinks the man is a fatuous idiot and hourly
expects a proposal.</p>
<p>If the various drugs are in the dental line,
the man is a cheerful soul with a tendency to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></SPAN></span>
be humorous. If she is particular as to small
details of scolding locks and eyebrows, he
probably wears glasses. If she devotes unusual
attention to her nails, the affair has
progressed to that interesting stage where he
may hold her hand for a few minutes at a
time.</p>
<p>If she selects her handkerchief with extreme
care,—one with an initial and a faint
odour of violet—she expects to give it to him
to carry and to forget to ask for it. If he
makes an extra call in order to return it, it
indicates a lesser degree of interest than if he
says nothing about it. The forgotten handkerchief
is an important straw with a girl
when love's capricious wind blows her way.</p>
<p>It is not entirely without reason that womankind
in general blames "the other woman"
for defection of any kind. Short-sighted
woman thinks it a mighty tribute to her own
charm to secure the passing interest of another's
rightful property. It does not seem
to occur to her that someone else will lure
him away from her with even more ease.
Each successive luring makes defection simpler
for a man. Practice tends towards<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></SPAN></span>
perfection in most things; perhaps it is the
single exception, love, which proves the rule.</p>
<p>Three delusions among women are widespread
and painful. Marriage is currently supposed
to reform a man, a rejected lover is heartbroken
for life, and, if "the other woman"
were only out of the way, he would come
back. Love sometimes reforms a man, but
marriage does not. The rejected lover suffers
for a brief period,—feminine philosophers
variously estimate it, but a week is a generous
average,—and he who will not come in spite of
"the other woman" is not worth having at all.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">"Not
Things,
but Men"</div>
<p>Emerson says: "The things which are
really for thee gravitate to thee." One is
tempted to add the World's Congress motto—"Not
things, but men."</p>
<p>There is no virtue in women which men
cultivate so assiduously as forgiveness. They
make one think that it is very pretty and
charming to forgive. It is not hygienic,
however, for the woman who forgives easily
has a great deal of it to do. When pardon is
to be had for the asking, there are frequent
causes for its giving. This, of course, applies
to the interesting period before marriage.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Post-Nuptial
Sins</div>
<p>Post-nuptial sins are atoned for with gifts;
not more than once in a whole marriage with
the simple, manly words, "Forgive me,
dear, I was wrong." It injures a man's conceit
vitally to admit he has made a mistake.
This is gracious and knightly in the lover, but
a married man, the head of a family, must be
careful to maintain his position.</p>
<p>Cases of reformation by marriage are few
and far between, and men more often die of
wounded conceit than broken hearts. "Men
have died and worms have eaten them, but
not for love," save on the stage and in the
stories women cry over.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">"The
Other
Woman"</div>
<p>"The other woman" is the chief bugbear
of life. On desert islands and in a very few
delightful books, her baneful presence is not.
The girl a man loves with all his heart can
see a long line of ghostly ancestors, and requires
no opera-glass to discern through the
mists of the future a procession of possible
posterity. It is for this reason that men's
ears are tried with the eternal, unchanging:
"Am I the only woman you ever loved?"
and "Will you always love me?"</p>
<p>The woman who finally acquires legal<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></SPAN></span>
possession of a man is haunted by the shadowy
predecessors. If he is unwary enough to
let her know another girl has refused him, she
develops a violent hatred for this inoffensive
maiden. Is it because the cruel creature has
given pain to her lord? His gods are not her
gods—if he has adored another woman.</p>
<p>These two are mutually "other women,"
and the second one has the best of it, for there
is no thorn in feminine flesh like the rejected
lover who finds consolation elsewhere. It
may be exceedingly pleasant to be a man's
first love, but she is wise beyond books who
chooses to be his last, and it is foolish to
spend mental effort upon old flames, rather
than in watching for new ones, for Cæsar
himself is not more utterly dead than a man's
dead love.</p>
<p>Women are commonly supposed to worry
about their age, but Father Time is a trouble
to men also. The girl of twenty thinks it
absurd for women to be concerned about the
matter, but the hour eventually comes when
she regards the subject with reverence akin to
awe. There is only one terror in it—the
dreadful nines.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Scylla
and
Charybdis</div>
<p>"Twenty-nine!" Might she not as well
be thirty? There is little choice between
Scylla and Charybdis. Twenty-nine is the
hour of reckoning for every woman, married,
engaged, or unattached.</p>
<p>The married woman felicitates herself
greatly, unless a tall daughter of nine or ten
walks abroad at her side. The engaged girl
is safe—she rejoices in the last hours of her
lingering girlhood and hems table linen with
more resignation. The unattached girl has a
strange interest in creams and hair tonics, and
usually betakes herself to the cloister of the
university for special courses, since azure
hosiery does not detract from woman's charm
in the eyes of the faculty.</p>
<p>Men do not often know their ages accurately
till after thirty. The gladsome heyday
of youth takes no note of the annual milestones.
But after thirty, ah me! "Yes," a
man will say sometimes, "I am thirty-one,
but the fellows tell me I don't look a day over
twenty-nine." Scylla and Charybdis again!</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Perennial
Youth</div>
<p>Still, age is not a matter of birthdays, but
of the heart. Some women are mature
cynics at twenty, while a grey-haired matron<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></SPAN></span>
of fifty seems to have found the secret of
perennial youth. There is little to choose,
as regards beauty and charm, between the
young, unformed girl, whose soft eyes look
with longing into the unyielding future which
gives her no hint of its purposes, and the
mature woman, well-groomed, self-reliant
to her finger-tips, who has drunk deeply of
life's cup and found it sweet. A woman is
never old until the little finger of her glove
is allowed to project beyond the finger itself
and she orders her new photographs from
an old plate in preference to sitting again.</p>
<p>In all the seven ages of man, there is someone
whom she may attract. If she is twenty-five,
the boy who has just attained long
trousers will not buy her striped sticks of
peppermint and ask shyly if he may carry her
books. She is not apt to wear fraternity
pins and decorate her rooms in college colours,
unless her lover still holds his alma
mater in fond remembrance. But there are
others, always the others—and is it less
sweet to inspire the love which lasts than
the tender verses of a Sophomore? Her field
of action is not sensibly limited, for at twenty<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></SPAN></span>
men love woman, at thirty a woman, and at
forty, women.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Three
Weapons</div>
<p>Woman has three weapons—flattery, food,
and flirtation, and only the last of these is
ever denied her by Time. With the first she
appeals to man's conceit, with the second to
his heart, which is suspected to lie at the
end of the œsophagus, rather than over
among lungs and ribs, and with the third
to his natural rivalry of his fellows. But
the pleasures of the chase grow beautifully
less when age brings rheumatism and kindred
ills.</p>
<p>Besides, may she not always be a chaperone?
When a political orator refers effectively
to "the cancer which is eating at the
heart of the body politic," someway, it
always makes a girl think of a chaperone.
She goes, ostensibly, to lend a decorous air
to whatever proceedings may be in view.
She is to keep the man from making love to
the girl. Whispers and tender hand clasps
are occasionally possible, however, for, tell
it not in Gath! the chaperone was once
young herself and at times looks the other
way.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>That is, unless she is the girl's mother.
Trust a parent for keeping two eyes and
a pair of glasses on a girl! Trust the non-matchmaking
mother for four new eyes under
her back hair and a double row of ears arranged
laterally along her anxious spine!
And yet, if the estimable lady had not been
married herself, it is altogether likely that the
girl would never have thought of it.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Chaperone</div>
<p>The reason usually given for chaperonage
is that it gives the girl a chance to become
acquainted with the man. Of course, in the
presence of a chaperone, a man says and does
exactly the same things he would if he were
alone with the maiden of his choice. He
does not mind making love to a girl in her
mother's presence. He does not even care
to be alone with her when he proposes to
her. He would like to have some chaperone
read his letters—he always writes with this
intention. At any time during the latter part
of the month it fills him with delight to see
the chaperone order a lobster after they have
all had oysters.</p>
<p>Nonsense! Why do not the leaders of society
say, frankly: "This chaperone business<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></SPAN></span>
is just a little game. Our husbands are either
at the club or soundly asleep at home. It is
not nice to go around alone, and it is pathetic
to go in pairs, with no man. We will go
with our daughters and their young friends,
for they have cavaliers enough and to spare.
Let us get out and see the world, lest we die
of ennui and neglect!" It is the chaperone
who really goes with the young man. She
takes the girl along to escape gossip.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Behold
his
House!</div>
<p>It is strange, when it is woman's avowed
object to make man happy, that she insists
upon doing it in her own way, rather than in
his. He likes the rich, warm colours; the deep
reds and dark greens. Behold his house!</p>
<p>Renaissance curtains obscure the landscape
with delicate tracery, and he realises what it
might mean to wear a veil. Soft tones of rose
and Nile green appear in his drawing-room.
Chippendale chairs, upon which he fears to
sit, invite the jaded soul to whatever repose
it can get. See the sofa cushions, which he
has learned by bitter experience never to touch!
Does he rouse a quiescent Nemesis by laying
his weary head upon that elaborate embroidery?
Not unless his memory is poor.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">Home
Comforts</div>
<p>Take careful note of the bric-à-brac upon
his library table. See the few square inches
of blotting paper on a cylinder which he can
roll over his letter—the three stamps stuck
together more closely than brothers, generously
set aside for his use. Does he find
comfort here? Not very much of it.</p>
<p>See the dainty dinner which is set before
the hungry man. A cup of rarest china holds
four ounces of clear broth. A stick of bread
or two crackers are allotted to him. Then he
may have two croquettes, or one small chop,
when his soul is athirst for rare roast beef and
steak an inch thick. Then a nice salad, made
of three lettuce leaves and a suspicion of oil,
another cracker and a cubic inch of cheese, an
ounce of coffee in a miniature cup, and behold,
the man is fed!</p>
<p>Why should he go to his club, call loudly
for flesh-pots, sink into a chair he is not afraid
of breaking, and forget his trouble in the
evening paper, while his wife is at home,
alone, or having a Roman holiday as a chaperone?</p>
<p>It is a simple thing to acquire a lover, but it
is a fine art to keep him. Clubs were origin<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></SPAN></span>ally
intended for the homeless, as distinguished
from the unmarried. The rare woman
who rests and soothes a man when he is tired
has no rival in the club. Misunderstanding,
sorrowful, yearning for what she has lost,
woman contemplates the wreck of her girlish
dream.</p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The Heart
of a
Woman</div>
<p>There are three things man is destined never
to solve—perpetual motion, the square of the
circle, and the heart of a woman. Yet he
may go a little way into the labyrinth with the
thread of love, which his Ariadne will gladly
give him at the door.</p>
<p>The dim chambers are fragrant with precious
things, for through the winding passages
Memory has strewn rue and lavender, love
and longing; sweet spikenard and instinctive
belief. Some day, when the heart aches, she
will brew content from these.</p>
<p>There are barriers which he may not pass,
secret treasures that he may not see, dreams
that he may not guess. There are dark
corners where there has been torture, of which
he will never know. There are shadows and
ghostly shapes which Penelope has hidden
with the fairest fabrics of her loom. There<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></SPAN></span>
are doors, tightly locked, which he has no key
to open; rooms which have contained costly
vessels, empty and deep with dust.</p>
<p>There is no other step than his, for he walks
there alone; sometimes to the music of dead
days and sometimes to the laughter of a little
child. The petals of crushed roses rustle at
his feet—his roses—in the inmost places of
her heart. And beyond, of spotless marble,
with the infinite calm of mountains and perpetual
snow, is something which he seldom
comprehends—her love of her own whiteness.</p>
<p>It is a wondrous thing. For it is so small
he could hold it in the hollow of his hand, yet
it is great enough to shelter him forever. All
the world may not break it if his love is steadfast
and unchanging, and loving him, it becomes
deep enough to love and pity all the
world.</p>
<p>It is a tender thing. So often is it wounded
that it cannot see another suffer, and its own
pain is easier far to bear. It makes a shield
of its very tenderness, gladly receiving the
stabs that were meant for him, forgiving
always, and forgetting when it may.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote" style="display:none">The
Solace</div>
<p>Yet, after all, it is a simple thing. For in
times of deepest doubt and trouble, it requires
for its solace only the tender look, the whispered
word which brings new courage, and
the old-time grace of the lover's way.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></SPAN></span><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</SPAN></span></p>
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