THE TIFF

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 243, 2 July 1918, Page 4

THE TIFF

AND A SOLILOQUY.

(By "Wi.")

Penelope and I are out—each of us did something, said something, that the t.tlier thought was over the fence, and over the fence is out, of course. Personally, I don't feel so sick about it as she perhaps thinks I ought to feel—if sho thinks about-, it at all,- that is. After all, why should she .think about it at .all? As for me, I don't care whether she feels sick about it or not. No, I'm—that is to say, I don't care a hang. Why should I? Wo met in the street the other day— ft pair of icicles. At least, sho was, and I hope I was. I tried to be—cold, callous. aloof, frigidly, cruelly polite. How perfectly but necessarily, silly! Anyway, who cares? You are all Penelopes, more or less. Your rage kindles your eye most becomingly, your hauteur exalts you ono decimal nought seven inches, and when in the supreme moment of the crisis you perform that inimitablo feminine act known as handing the icy mitt there is nothing left for us to do but transform ourselves into worms and look for holes in which to seek ignominy and obscurity. For us—the brutes, that is—tho violent death, tho suicide's grave —wo don't think. Oh, no! Gono is the day when we would die for you. The day of white muslin, rose arbours, and Gretna Green is past, dead, buried. You have become strenuous, competitive, independent. Some of you want rights, women's rights, with a capital W and a capital R. Tho Screaming Sisterhood stalks abroad and makes speeches and writes to tho newsDapers. But you don't all scream, thank Heaven! Some of you are quite domesticated little persons, with votes for early closing and antieverything elso that niakos men horrid. Rights again! Yes, you have rights that. Penelope of Gretna Green didn't have— and didn't want. And with all your rights, all your competition, all vour strenuousness, all your freedom, and all your independence, you like to 6iieak off to a corner and read about the happy-go-lucky Penelope who stole out among the shadows of a. moonlight night in her riding habit and galloped with her Galahad to tho Smithy of Gretna Green. Aha!

Wherefore aro yo named (lie Eternal Feminine.