A WORD
WITH THE WOMEN
(By Ella W Penttle)
When one is particularly cynical, there is nothing that confirms her pessimism more than to pick up a copy of the daily paper, and read all the news that refers to women. Misery, pain, shame, sorrow, heroism, madness, sacrifice, and now and then happiness on frivolity are to be found that would furnish the material for a dozen novels, yet are contained in the telegraphic reports of one day Taking a paper by chance the other day this is what I found in a single issue.
Lizzie Clark, a Salvation army girl of St Louis entered a fire engine house, went to the stall where the horse are kept, and, falling on her knees, began to pray for the squid of the horses. They arrested her and locked her in a cell, where she peered through the bars and sang “Rescue the Perishing" Was she mad? Well, of course, the policeman thought so. Perhaps all of St. Louis thought so. In India a person would be a mad who suggested that woman had a soul. In America a person is mad who suggests that a horse has one. One has only to be in the minority to be mad.
Here is the next item. At East Liverpool, Or, a woman lies dying calling for her daughter, who has left her and disappeared. She fears the utmost of shame and misery for that daughter, and has forgotten the pangs of death in her agonized anxiety for her child-who, not very long ago was her innocent little girl. This is sorrow past sorrow, and death, to be merciful, must come quickly.
From pathos to bathos
Amelle Rives Chanler has discovered a hero whose heart gave a hot leap along his breast to his throat, leaving a fiery track behind as of sparks"
Here is the tragic-and the heroic At Charleston, W Va, Robert Hill beat one of his sons so cruelly that the boy ran to his mother for protection. She wrapped her arms around him the infuriated father struck her and beat her. His young daughter-only a child in years-walked into the room, placed a revolver at the base of her father's brain and killed him. She has been indicted for murder. But she belongs along with Corday and other slayers of tyrants. Such acts pass crime and become heroism. Moral action has its perfect circle. Vice and virtue meet. If a West Virginia jury convicts her the men will have degenerated from the time when they stood alone against their mother state, and Beceded for human liberty, making new boundary lines to emphasize their principles.
Then here's a woman married at 55 to a man of 69-snatching an afterglow of happiness.
Ada Rehan, they say, has a penchant ie for handsome furniture.
Miss Nether sole has copper-colored hair, and plays Gilberte in Trou' Trou' this way in the last act 'The scene where Sartorys comes to Gilberte in Venice after she has abandoned him for Valreas was characterized by intense dramatic feeling, but the climax of her art was not reached until the last act, where, dishonored, and dying, she returns to her old home and her child. Her face was so deathlike in Its at expression, her eyes so weird, her voice so feeble, with the warning note of death evident in its whispered cadences, that those who saw and heard it all, shuddered and wept. The house was so still that the sobs of women could on be heard despite the efforts to suppress them, and even the men were using their handkerchief freely."
Here's a woman bribing her daughter, who is a countless poor creature- to leave the United States and never he come back She offers her $8,000 a year if she will do it. The daughter accepted and signed the agreement.
A bride on her wedding night, living in the wilds of Indiana, is beaten in her own house by two former admirers, and the husband kills them.
A hungry bull dog, outraged and stung into anarchy by the sight through a plate glass window of a young woman holding a little beribboned puppy in her arms, leaps through the window and endeavors to tear the dog In places. Falling in this owing to the woman's protection of her pet, he rends her hand.
A wedding ceremony, with maids of honor, bridesmaids, flowers, palms, white prayer book, vell and "a diamond stair the gift of the groom " The name of the groom is mentioned most incidentally and casually. The description of the gown of the bride fills a quarter of a column. Is it a marriage -or only a wedding?
That's the day's grist. That's the way one day grinds human hearts. The mills of the gods grind exceedingly small.
