84

DISAGREES WITH MRS. PEATTIE.

OMAHA, May 14.-- [To the Editor of the
WORLD-HERALD.]--I read in your Sunday's
paper of May 6 an article under the
head of "Brain and Heart Broken" with
very mixed feelings. First, admiration of
Mrs. Peattie's skillful manner of "putting
things," sorrow at the pitiful picture
drawn by the wronged and suffering
girl, and lastly, indignation,
mingled with amusement, at the tirade
against the "ignorant mothers" who
are held accountable for such a terrible
condition of affairs. The poor mothers.
It has often occurred to me in reading
Mrs. Peattie's articles that she has a very
low opinion of mothers. May I be allowed
to lift my feeble voice in behalf of the long
suffering women who are passing sleepless
nights in the effort to rear their
sons and daughters in what appears
to them the best way? In the first place I
must ask Mrs. Peattie if, with her knowledge
of girls and human nature, she
honestly believes that the victim in her
story, a girl working in a restaurant, was
totally ignorant of the laws of nature,
that she was innocent as a young child
who has been carefully watched and
guarded, that no suspicion of evil
should reach her? Does she believe it possible
that a girl who goes out to service
can escape contact with other working
girls, all more or less enlightened as to
their physical beings and the consequences
of transgression from the path of virtue
and chastity? I do not for one instant.
No, it is there too much than too
little knowledge that has proved her ruin.
Cheap literature and talks with other girls
on subjects which had better been let
alone, have intamed her imagination and
led her on to harm. It may be that your
able writer has not known much of girls
during her girlhood, perhaps she never was
inside of a public school. If she had been
she would have discovered that a girl's
strongest characteristic is unfortunately
her curiosity, and that girls learn so much
from one another that there would be little
left for the mother to impart if she did her
duty as Mrs. Peattie so earnestly desires.
Very few if any can plead innocence
or ignorance at the ages of 12
or 13, if they could I should consider
it a cause for thankfulness, as I am
either so "shy" or so "foolish" that I think
innocence a most desirable state for a
young girl and firmly believe that there is
a natural sense of decency and modesty innate
in every respectably born girl
which is her best protection.
Any girl whose natural instincts are so
blunt that she does not realize when a man
is taking improper liberties with her would
scarcely be saved by any amount of information
administered by parents. I have
always believed that the reason
our creator has furnished us with
these instincts of delicacy and modesty
was partially for our protection against
evil suggestions or improper advances, but
Mrs. Peattie evidently does not admit this,
if, then, she thinks that a disposition toward
wrong rather than right is so deeply
implanted in the bodies of our
children, will any amount of enlightenment
as to the consequences
of transgression prevent them from indulging
these desires? Were it not much
wiser to shield our children, as far as possible;
keep them from contact with those
who are evil-minded and from bad literature,
and luculcate principles of modesty
and chastity? It does seem to the
positively indecent to take a pure-minded
girl or boy, one who has not been contaminated
by the heroing in a mixed school,
and explain to them all you know of the
fundamental law of life, the process of
birth, which can never be made
other than hideous by the most
carefully chosen words- to lay
bare to their childish minds in the horrors
which may result from too much intimacy
with the opposite sex. Imagine picturing
to their imaginations all the mysteries of
love, marriage and child bearing, which
are more than grown persons with matured
minds can readily graso. Such revelations
to unformed and hitherto childishly
innocent minds would be revolting, and
instead of the frank freedom which girls
and boys would ordinarily enjoy together
a disagreeable self-consciousness would
be likely to result.

I cannot believe that it would have the
slightest effect as far as the prevention
of seduction is concerned. Where
animalism prevents to such a degree
evil must in many cases result, if the girl
is forced to leave her home and seek her
living in the world among strangers. I
know many kind women in Omaha who
watch carefully and solicitously over
the girls doing service in their
houses, and help to keep them
from temptation and harm, but
at the same time they would hesitate, and
very properly, I think, to tell their little
girls of the evils in the world, to which,
with any sort of careful training, they
need never be subjected. When the sons
and daughters leave home, when their
minds and their bodies are developed,
it is quite time in my humble
opinion to inform them on "the most vital
points of life". There need be no fear that
girls brought in close contact with numbers
of others and whose lives have been
passed away from the shelter of a home
and mothers' care, need information on
these points. When they trangress they
know what will be the result, and can
scarcely plead innocence in palliation
weakness of course must be their great excuse,
and that all flesh is heir to unhappily.
The weakness of womankind in
condoning in men a sin which they loudly
condemn in women is most shameful. Let
us hope and pray that the day is near
when both will be judged alike here, as
they most surely will be above.

A MOTHER.