Life — April 22, 1909 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ballade of the Woman’s Number By Mary Eleanor Roberts IFE and the Woman! Of these I speak. Maids and matrons, are you aware Former times are come back this week? “Dames Seules now we're obliged to fare, Haste and search for the dim. keepsakes,’ the cumber; Ringletted surely should be your hair, You must go in the Woman's Number. ashions where garret Nay, be grateful and show no pique; Though for aid you no longer care, Try to swoon and be-mild and meek; Muslin now is the only wear; It becomes you, I do declare; Equal Rights are but uscless lumber ; Off with that independent air! You must xo in the Woman's Number. Suffragettes may protest and shriek, Learned Portias may pout and stare, Claiming the Editor is a freak; Though you can smoke, or shoot, or Ladies eminent, gallant, fair, Helen of Troy or Madame Humbert, Since you can do no mischief there, You must go in the Woman's Number. Envoy Princess! Eagerly do you dare, Waked at last’ from your slumber, Claim life owes you an equal share? You must go in the Woman’s Number. Pie Clannow Pee, magic Some Current Comment LY AGNES REPPLIER An Erroneous Impression HE time is close at hand for com- mencement addresses, for graduate eloquence, for much oratorical advice, poured into the heedless ears of youth. The Bishop of London has opened the tall with an address to the students of a fashionable girls’ school at the West End; and the apostolic counsel he of- fered his innocent audience was “never to be cats.” His conception of a cat— so far as we can understand—is a crea- ture of narrowly virtuous habits, who in- jures its neighbor’s reputation. “ There all the difference in the world,"’ he 1, “between an old maid and a cat You need never be afraid of being an old maid. so long as you are not 2 cat.”" One wonders if the good prelate has ever known a cat—an animal full of simple dignity and constitutional _re- serve, who walks its appointed path in soothing indifference to all moral issues The female pussy is, indeed, more of a Messalina than a spinster; but she has a breadth of tolerance, a gentleness of breeding, and always a fine and delicate spirit of aloofness. It scems particu- larly hard that she should be held up as an example of vices from which she is by nature exempt. After all, it was not a cat, nor yet a woman, who wrote enthusiastically: “Believe me, there is nothing in life so delightful as to find a liar in a person of repute. The goutiest man would go on foot without a crutch, to tell his friend of it at midnight.”" Vanity of Vanities F women obtain the suffrage which some of them covet, and so become di- rectly responsible for their share of leg- islative blunders, it is to be hoped that they will cease holding themselves indi- rectly responsible for all that happens to the nation. We shall at least have a respite from the time-worn about rocking the cradle and ruling the world; for even the full-blown egotism of the American woman can hardly claim the prerogatives of both sexes There are few things more flattering to human vanity than the assumption of boundless influence. When Mrs. Armor, “the Georgia cyclone,” assures her fe- male audience that “there was never a soul went to perdition but some woman was responsible for it,” the audience, oblivious to the difference between a statement and a fact, dilates with pleas- urable awe. It is gratifying to thi that a man cannot reach either heaven or hell (strict theologians hold that he is bound to go to one or the other) un- less personally conducted up or down the road. So few women get a reasonable chance to sin on their own account that there is compensation in believing—or in pretending to believe—that the copious misdemeanors of men may be laid at their doors. It saves them from being a negligible quantity. The Color of Life HERE is not likely to be any dearth of information concerning our new President. Already the papers are chronicling his uneventful days, and giv- ing us a candid account of every waking hour. But it must be confessed that there is something tame about the rec- ord, after the more vivid history of Mr. Roosevelt's activities. We miss the old familiar headlines, “ President braves the storm!'? and the thrilling paragraph telling how the head of the nation has walked home at night from the Gridiron Club, through snow two inches deep, and how he shook the flakes from his broad shoulders, and stamped them from his boots at the White House door. We miss the oft-repeated tale of his daily rides “through wind and weather,”’ and of the secret service men who accom- panied him, and who, being mere molly- coddles, were contemptibly tired and damp, while the President pushed strenu- ously on. There was a“ Napoleon cross- ing the Alps’ flavor about all this which set our blood tingling, and which Mr. Taft, padding along in his new motor, can hardly hope to rival! Cig me Teun sentiment comicbooks.com