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BARRIERS AGAINST WOMAN

They Are Mostly Erected by the Women Themselves Blind Superstition.

Prejudices of Youth Which Endure Through Womanhood -- A Flea for the Unusual Woman.

All that follows is for women. The men are not forbidden, but they are advised not to read it.

But, the, they will read it. A man always does anything he wants to, particularly if it is forbidden."

It is so from his earliest days.

At the age of 6 he says to himself:

"If I climbed to the top of that baro I wonder if I would see anything that I never saw before."

He climbs to the top of the barn. he sees fields, houses, woods that he did not know existed. And he perceives that the world is large -- unexpectedly large. His mother comes out of the house and sees him on the barn. She does not scold him. She thinks he is splendidly adventurous. She mends his torn trousers without complaining.

But let her little daughter show any such inclination to see the world! She is called names that are a shock to her innocence. She is told that she is a "tomboy" -- terrible word! Her budding modesty is offended. Her ambition is [?] She drops bitter tears into her little checked apron and admits to herself that it was very naughty indeed of her to try to find out if the world was large. She discovers that for a woman it is not large -- that is to say, no larger than the door yard.

And, in a little while, she, too, has a contempt for a woman who tries to get up where can look off and see what the world is like.

It is this placing of the limitations of women by the women themselves that always seems to me one of the most irritating of things. There are some women who always resent the success of any other woman.

After one of Mrs. Lease's peculiar and not to be forgotten addresses, I heard a woman say:

"Why in the world doesn't she stay at home and take care of her children?"

There is a place where the women stay home and take care of the children. It is in India. And there the men have so little respect for them that they do not even accredit them with the possession of souls. And what is very much worse, I do not think the women suspect that this theory is wrong. They are married in infancy, their lives are doomed if their husbands die, and from birth to death they live in degrading subserviency to the men. And well may these girl mothers weep when the child they have born them is not a son! Well may turn from the dark eyes of their little daughters, knowing what their future is to be:

There's the necessity of being mammal. Women are destined to be that. But the fact is subordinated to the Woman herself. She is the Fact. Posterity is a secondary consideration.

The other night after a horribly hot day a woman was going home from [?] park. She had five little children. One of them seemed to be about 5 or 6 weeks old. The oldest appeared to be about 7 years. The children were all sleepy, but they didn't cry. They were good little things. They all had baskets or bundles, and had no doubt carried their luncheon to the park and eaten it there. When the mother signaled the train to stop she half arose. All the children did the same. The car stopped with a jerk. There was the usual result. Some one picked up the babies. The conductor dropped them off the car. Three of them fell getting across the street. A horse was coming and the mother had much difficulty in jerking them out of the way. The bundles seemed to be all over the block. But the tired woman gathered them up after a little and the troupe went on.

"Well," a woman on the car said, "if I had as many children as that, I'd stay at home."

She hadn't as many children as that -- or any at all. She is a woman who doesn't like to be inconvenienced. That is why she has never had any children. Instead, she has pink luncheons.

BARRIERS AGAINST WOMAN

They Are Mostly Erected by the Women Themselves Blind Superstition.

Prejudices of Youth Which Endure Through Womanhood -- A Flea for the Unusual Woman.

All that follows is for women. The men are not forbidden, but they are advised not to read it.

But, the, they will read it. A man always does anything he wants to, particularly if it is forbidden."

It is so from his earliest days.

At the age of 6 he says to himself:

"If I climbed to the top of that baro I wonder if I would see anything that I never saw before."

He climbs to the top of the barn. he sees fields, houses, woods that he did not know existed. And he perceives that the world is large -- unexpectedly large. His mother comes out of the house and sees him on the barn. She does not scold him. She thinks he is splendidly adventurous. She mends his torn trousers without complaining.

But let her little daughter show any such inclination to see the world! She is called names that are a shock to her innocence. She is told that she is a "tomboy" -- terrible word! Her budding modesty is offended. Her ambition is [?] She drops bitter tears into her little checked apron and admits to herself that it was very naughty indeed of her to try to find out if the world was large. She discovers that for a woman it is not large -- that is to say, no larger than the door yard.