Part 20

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“How To Be ‘Smart’ Though Middle-aged” is the title of an article that is going the rounds. The smartest thing the middle-aged can do is to recognize that they are middle-aged and act accordingly, and this applies to men as well as women.

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No woman nowadays makes the promise to obey in the marriage service with the slightest intention of keeping it, so why compel her to prevaricate to the minister? Let her reserve that privilege to use with her husband.

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The courts of Missouri have decided that a husband cannot be arrested for burning up his wife’s clothes, as they are his, not hers; but after his wife learned of this decision the man soon found himself in jail for disturbing the peace.

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“Man is the natural protector of woman,” shouted several thousand of the species as they attacked the suffrage parade in Washington. “Man is the natural protector of woman,” echoed the policemen as they turned their backs.

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The “antis” ask why the suffragists are not afraid to trust men with the musket in time of war, but are afraid to trust them with the ballot? Bless you, nobody wants to take the ballot away from them; but the suffragists can’t see how a man can represent more than one person with one ballot, and, besides, some of them haven’t got any man, and they think it isn’t fair to be deprived of both the man and the vote.

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Recently, at an anti-suffrage meeting in one of those wonderfully progressive towns for which Connecticut is noted, forty ladies signed a remonstrance against giving other women something which this immortal forty did not want for themselves. Where was Ali Baba with his oil can?

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When the women watched that crowd of men in Madison Square Garden cheer and howl and whoop and yell an hour and a half for one candidate, and the next night a similar crowd go through the same performance the same length of time for another candidate, they fully realized that women are too emotional for political life.

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A great editor criticises the Washington suffragists severely because they reserved so many rooms for the out-of-town paraders that the inaugural committee couldn’t find enough for its marchers. “They lost a great opportunity to win the new administration by unselfishness and sacrifice,” he said, and the women haven’t quit laughing yet.

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The president of the Woman’s Club at Boise, Idaho, where they have had equal suffrage for nearly twenty years, says that “nothing puts the fear of God into the hearts of men like the ballot in the hands of women.” Yes, a certain class of men feel much more comfortable to know that women are using the beautiful, indirect influence of prayers and tears.

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Sir Almoth Wright says the advocates of equal pay for women do not know the commercial value of having the employe work shoulder to shoulder with the employer. Yes? No? What about the good-looking stenographer?

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The President of France is considering the proposal to decorate with the Cross of the Legion of Honor the mother of twenty-two children. Something that could be exchanged for twenty-two pairs of shoes would be more appropriate.

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Seven girl students of Leland Stanford University have just been elected to Phi Beta Kappa and not one of the boys, although they outnumber the girls two to one. Comment would be impolite, not to say unfeeling.

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New York women have announced that the day for women’s “auxiliaries” is past, and Chicago women have given notice to the men of that city that they will not serve on any more “sub” committees. Really, that Declaration of Independence of 1776 begins to seem like rather a weak document.

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Perish the thought that a minister of the Gospel—and especially a woman—should contest with a horse race! But when the Rev. Anna Shaw, president of the National Suffrage Association, began speaking from an automobile behind the grand-stand at the Wisconsin State Fair, the whole crowd climbed down to hear her and forgot all about the races.