Threads of Grey and Gold Part 14

Then draw me close to thee, for life is brief-- A little s.p.a.ce to pa.s.s as best one can.

I am thy Pa.s.sion. Thou shalt cling to me Through all the years to come. The silken cord Of Pleasure has become a stronger bond, Not to be cleft, nor loosened at a word.

I am thy Master. Thou shalt crush for me The grapes of truth for wine of sacrifice; My clanking chains were forged for such as thee, I am thy Master--yea, I am thy vice!

The Superiority of Man

Without pausing to inquire why savages and barbarians are capable of producing college professors, who sneer at the source from which they sprung, we may accept for the moment the masculine hypothesis of intellectual superiority. Some women have been heard to say that they wish they had been born men, but there is no man bold enough to say that he would like to be a woman.

If woman can produce a reasoning being, it follows that she herself must be capable of reasoning, since a stream can rise no higher than its fountain. And yet the bitter truth stares us in the face. We have no Shakespeare, Michelangelo, or Beethoven; our Darwins, our Schumanns are mute and inglorious; our Miltons, Raphaels, and Herbert Spencers have not arrived.

Call the roll of the great and how many women's names will be found there? Scarcely enough to enable you to call the company mixed.

No woman in her senses wishes to be merely the female of man. She aspires to be distinctly different--to exercise her varied powers in wholly different ways. Ex-President Roosevelt said: "Equality does not imply ident.i.ty of function." We do not care to put in telephones or to collect fares on a street-car.

Primitive man set forth from his cave to kill an animal or two, then repaired to a secluded nook in the jungle, with other primitive men, to discuss the beginnings of politics. Primitive woman in the cave not only dressed his game, but she cooked the animal for food, made clothing of its skin, necklaces and bracelets of its teeth, pa.s.s.e.m.e.nterie of its claws, and needles of its sharper bones. What wonder that she had no time for an afternoon tea?

The man of the twentieth century has progressed immeasurably beyond this, but his wife, industrially speaking, has not gone half so far.

Is she not still in some cases a cave-dweller, while he roams the highways of the world?

If a woman mends men's socks, should he not darn her lisle-thread hosiery, and run a line of machine st.i.tching around the middle of the hem to prevent a disastrous run from a broken st.i.tch? If she presses his ties, why should he not learn to iron her bits of fine lace?

Some one will say: "But he supports her. It is her duty."

"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 pa.s.sably, 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 ill.u.s.tration 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.

The Year of My Heart

A sigh for the spring, full flowered, promised spring, Laid on the tender earth, and those dear days When apple blossoms gleamed against the blue!

Ah, how the world of joyous robins sang: "I love but you, Sweetheart, I love but you!"

A sigh for summer fled. In warm, sweet air Her thousand singers sped on shining wing; And all the inward life of budding grain Throbbed with a thousand pulses, while I cling To you, my Sweet, with pa.s.sion near to pain.

A sigh for autumn past. The garnered fields Lie desolate to-day. My heart is chill As with a sense of dread, and on the sh.o.r.e The waves beat grey and cold, and seem to say: "No more, oh, waiting soul, oh nevermore!"

A sigh for winter come. No singing bird, Nor harvest field, is near the path I tread; An empty husk is all I have to keep.

The largess of my giving left me bare, And I ask G.o.d but for His Lethe--sleep.

The Average Man

The real man is not at all on the outskirts of civilisation. He is very much in evidence and everybody knows him. He has faults and virtues, and sometimes they get so mixed up that "you cannot tell one from t'other."

He is erratic and often queer. He believes, with Emerson, that "with consistency a great soul has nothing to do." And he is, of course, "a great soul." Logical, isn't it?

The average man _thinks_ that he is a born genius at love-making.

Henders, in _The Professor's Love Story_, states it thus:

"Effie, ye ken there are some men ha' a power o'er women....

They're what ye might call 'dead shots.' Ye canna deny, Effie, that I'm one o' those men!"

Even though a man may be obliged to admit, in strict confidence between himself and his mirror, that he is not at all handsome, nevertheless he is certain that he has some occult influence over that strange, mystifying, and altogether unreasonable organ--a woman's heart.

The real man is conceited. Of course you are not, dear masculine reader, for you are one of the bright particular exceptions, but all of your men friends are conceited--aren't they?

And then he makes fun of his women folks because they spend so much time in front of the mirror in arranging hats and veils. But when a high wind comes up and disarranges coiffures and chapeaux alike, he takes "my ladye fair" into some obscure corner, and saying, "Pardon me, but your hat isn't quite straight," he will deftly restore that piece of millinery to its pristine position. That's nice of him, isn't it? He does very nice things quite often, this real man.

He says women are fickle. So they are, but men are fickle too, and will forget all about the absent sweetheart while contemplating the pretty girls in the street. For while "absence makes the heart grow fonder" in the case of a woman, it is presence that plays the mischief with a man, and Miss Beauty present has a very unfair advantage over Miss Sweetheart absent.