"When a woman will she will, And when she won't she won't, There has been a great deal of talk during the past three decades anent female enfranchisement; but I have yet to see one really representative American woman clamoring for the blessed privilege of saving the country via the thorny path of politics. After having interviewed, as a working journalist, most of the leading lights of the “reform" movement, I am inclined to suspect every woman who wants to vote of having failed in an earnest attempt to get married, or of having been so unfortunate as to miss her "affinity" and get tied to some other fellow. Generally speaking, it is the matrimonial failures, the henpecked husbands and women with voices like a cat-fight and faces that would frighten a trolley car who compose the female suffrage contingent. The exceptions only prove the rule. Instead of being a thing of beauty and a joy forever, the "strong-minded woman" is almost invariably a faded wall-flower. Man doesn't know any too much himself; but he aspires to be the head of his own household. That is why he dodges women who want to take him to educate. He has no ambition to play the tender and clinging vine to some sturdy female oak. Theoretically, "taxation without representation" is all wrong, whether the object of the mulct wear breeches or bloomers; but that woman who cannot find a worthy husband or rear a valiant son to "represent " her in the forum and the field should acknowledge herself a failure. The right kind of a woman may be pressed and repressed, but never oppressed or suppressed by "tyrant man." I have yet to see a maid in love, with a fair prospect of making a landing; I have yet to see a beautiful woman, after whom men gazed as though they longed to steal her; I have yet to see a woman with a kindly, sympathetic face and a low, sweet voice that thrills the hearts of men with a fiercer joy than trumpet's blow for war, clamoring for female enfranchisement. The woman who looms up in a calico gown like a Grecian goddess on dress-parade; who can, with a glance of her eyes, set every man's soul on fire and bring him to her feet; who can transform an humble cottage into a happy home gilded with God's own glory; who can make a husband play the lover through a long lifetime, and rear a crop of boy babies fit to wear the crown of American sovereignty, never suspects that the world will go to hades awhooping if she doesn't hustle down to the polls and express her political preferences. She knows that every law that does her wrong is written upon the sand; that every government that fails to guard her as its chief glory is doomed to nameless death. Served by the world's wisdom and circled by its chivalry, she stands secure an Empress by Right Divine. When a man is good for nothing else, he goes to preaching or starts a 66 reform " newspaper. When a woman either fails to catch a man or in a fit of desperation marries some whiskered Miss Nancy without sufficient moral courage to manage her, she concludes that the times are out of joint and that she has been raised up to put them right. The woman who is the crown jewel of a good home keeps off the hustings; but the one who commands neither love at home nor admiration abroad feels that she is being robbed of her "rights." Give a woman youth and beauty and she asks not-needs not-political power; but when, still a maid, her mirror tells her she could not pass for five-andforty in the moonlight; when her bracelet slips over her elbows and a thumb-ring would make her a garter; when she becomes either a perambulating tub of unwholesome lard or has to pad her diaphragm to cast a shadow, she is apt to be morbidly sensitive to "The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay." declines to endure the ills she has, but flies to others she knows not of. Attend any female suffrage convention, and you will find more wrinkles than roses. It is a startling aggregation of brawny fists and big feet, or scrawny necks and bosoms either flat or formless-a nightmare for the artist, the despair of a poet. One can scarce blame such a crowd for pleading the right of self-protection. They certainly need it. In states where full or partial female suffrage now prevails, the home-woman ofttimes goes to the polls, as well as her "progressive" sister; but she does so simply because those she loves are pulling for the success of party, and have called upon her to offset the female vote of the opposition. The home-woman—the woman we love, and whose slightest wish is our law-cares never a copper who is president or poundmaster so long as the lord of her life is well content. The very fact that it has taken forty years to bring woman such a little way on the road to emancipation" proves that politics is foreign to the law of her being. She doesn't have to embark in bitter crusades to wring concessions from those who live only to serve her; to whom wealth and power are as bitter ashes and the mural wreath a crown of thorns unless illumined by her love. The true woman-the woman who is really a helpmeet unto man; the woman who is "first at the cradle and last at the grave "; the woman who meekly obeys us while ruling us with a golden rod; the woman who laughs at us but loves us; the woman who asks our forgiveness when we are the offender; the woman who doesn't believe one-half we tell her, yet would make any sacrifice to serve 66 us, simply asks for what she wants, and if it is not prompt forthcoming makes a quiet sneak on our inside pockets while we sleep for circumstantial evidence that will force a verdict in her favor. It is usually the woman who is not welcome anywhere, who has no one to love her, whose very presence makes a man feel like reaching for a fence picket, who wants to be a torchlight procession. *** THE FISTICPHOBIA FOLLY. THE Fool-killer is dead. He took one look at the fin de siecle crop he was expected to harvest, softly murmured, and gave up the ghost. With a two-edged scythe, operated by electricity, he could not scoop in even the preachers and politicians demanding his attention in this day of decadents and demagogues. Doubtless many of them are more knave than fool; but when a man deliberately signs a certificate of his own irremediable idiocy, I am inclined to let it go at that. The terms may be interchangeable, the doctors having decided that rascality is a disease. I am no apologist for pugilism. If I thought a son of mine would enter the squared-circle to do battle for boodle and the distinction of being known as chief of brutes, I'd hang him with his own diapers. I'd rather see him a preacher than a pugilist. He might outgrow the one, but he could never live down the odium of the other. But― to drop from the classic to the vulgar-it "makes me tired" to see a lot of plotting politicians and half-baked preachers tearing around like a hen on a hot griddle, or a skye terrier with a clothespin anchored to his tail, simply because a couple of professional pugs want to pound each other with feather pillows for a fat purse. I cannot see, to save me, where their kick comes in. Suppose the pugilists do maim each other: Who will mourn? Not the ministers; for, to judge by their utterances, they would gladly see the whole gang under the grass. If they kill each other, who will weep? Not the politicians—they have troubles of their own. “But the public will be corrupted," I am told. The public appears amply able to take care of itself—it has put more than a thousand preachers in the penitentiary. The modern politicians "guarding public morals" were like setting the wolf to watch the lamb―or placing Sextus Tarquinius in charge of a female seminary. There's Culberson, for instance" our heroic young Christian governor "-what? Imagine Son Charles guarding anything -except Dan Stuart or a stack of poker chips! Think of the erstwhile paramour of Widow Halpin-who saved more than a million out of a salary aggregating less than $350,000-keeping watch and ward lest the pugilists “ corrupt the country"! Think of a crap-shooting, chippychasing legislature with its pockets full of complimentary passes-shielding Texas from pugilistic contamination; of a Congress addicted to closed carriages and French bal masques, rushing in hot haste to the rescue of the cacti and cayuses of New Mexico-guarding the morals of the greasers! 66 I am assured by the ministers that "only the canaille witness pugilistic controversies "-that "none but the roughs and rowdies gather at the ring side." How can a prize fight, however brutal," corrupt " cattle of that kind? How can you spoil a rotten egg, or debase those already debauched? If El Paso is willing to be made the rendezvous of all the roughs and rowdies, should not all the rest |