If Fate had Made them Women

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 445, 12 February 1890, Page 3

If Fate had Made them Women

An American syndicate has been gleaning from some well-known men what they would do if they were women. Robert J. Burdette writes : What would I do if I were a woman ? I wouldn’t try to be a man. Cut that out and paste it onyour looking-glass,daughter, and it will be an ornament of grace unto thy head and chains about thy neck many times a day. I wouldn’t shudder and groan every time the name of the Monster was mentioned, but I would studiously avoid acquiring the lightest of his many accomplishments and the best of his manifold ways. I would never learn to lay a fire, in range or fireplace. Every time I touched a fire, summer or winter, I would put it dead out; then I’d never be expected to make one. The first loaf of bread I baked I would let drop on the dog and kill him. Then I’d never be asked to bake bread again, and I’d get a new dog. When I descended into the laundry, I would manage to bring out all the fancy flannels, white as ghosts, and all the white shirts as blue as the skies of June. Then I’d never be asked to assist at the washtub again. If I had to sit on the front seats when asked to drive, I would carry a large sun umbrella, and gouge the driver’s eyes out, and run the team into a fence corner the first mile out. Then I'd get the back seat on the shady side every time ever afterward. I would always sit sideways in a tramcar. Then I would have plenty of room. In church I would never rise during singing, and never kneel during prayer. Then people would notice me, and say, ‘ Who is that pretty girl, with such lovely eyes ?’ At the theatre I would wear the biggest hat obtainable. At cricket and lawn-tennis matches I would sit in the front raw and raise my P TLnld cultivate such charming helplessless, such hopeless innocence, such pretty ignorance, suoh fascinating dependence, such dainty haby ways, that people would say, ‘ Oh, we must take care of her; she doesn’t understand these things.’ Then •ell my life long I would be petted, and coddled, and fondled, and cared for in a thousand ways, where more independent

women would have to * hustle for themsolves * Max O’Rell writes that if he were a woman, he should consider few men, if any, worthy of him. He goes on : “If I were a woman, I should expect a tJiumphal arch erected over each door through which I was about to pass, and each floor strewn with flowers upon which I was about to tread. This is what I would do. And if the men were to expecc me to recurn any gratitude to them for it—why, that’s just what I would not do.’ If Doctor Talmage were, a woman he would stay a woman. He says : —* If there is anything despicable to my mind, it is an effeminate man or a masculine womanJust in proportion as a woman does her. work in the sphere that God has appointed for her she will be happy and attractive. There is a great multitude of men now who, by their manners, assume a sort of womanhood. They want to be soft; they go simpering through the world, and they are far from being of interest to anybody. A man should be a man ; a woman a woman, and nothing else. There is. no reason why there should be any distinction as to where the line should be that divides man’s appropriate field and woman’s particular sphere. Every man knows when he is engaged in his right occupation, and so does every woman, and when . they attempt otherwise they become offensive to all sensible men and all sensible women.’