Chapter 33

MASCULINE AND FEMININE.

There are men who suppose they have all the annoyances. They say it is the store that ruffles the disposition; but if they could only stay at home as do their wives, and sisters, and daughters, they would be, all the time, sweet and fair as a white pond lily. Let some of the masculine lecturers on placidity of temper try for one week the cares of the household and the family. Let the man sleep with a baby on one arm all night, and one ear open to the children with the whooping-cough in the adjoining apartment. Let him see the tray of crockery and the cook fall down stairs, and nothing saved but the pieces. Let the pump give out on a wash-day, and the stove pipe, when too hot for handling, get dislocated. Let the pudding come out of the stove stiff as a poker. Let the gossiping gabbler of next door come in and tell all the disagreeable things that neighbors have been saying. Let the lungs be worn out by staying indoors without fresh air, and the needle be threaded with nerves exhausted. After one week's household annoyances, he would conclude that Wall street is heaven and the clatter of the Stock Exchange rich as Beethoven's symphony.

We think Mary of Bethany a little to blame for not helping Martha get the dinner. If women sympathize with men in the troubles of store and field, let the men also sympathize with the women in the troubles of housekeeping. Many a housewife has died of her annoyances. A bar of soap may become a murderous weapon. The poor cooking stove has sometimes been the slow fire on which the wife has been roasted. In the day when Latimer and Ridley are honored before the universe as the martyrs of the fire, we do not think the Lord will forget the long line of wives, mothers, daughters and sisters who have been the martyrs of the kitchen.

Accompanying masculine criticism of woman's temper goes the popular criticism of woman's dress.

A convention has recently been held in Vineland, attended by the women who are opposed to extravagance in dress. They propose, not only by formal resolution, but by personal example, to teach the world lessons of economy by wearing less adornment and dragging fewer yards of silk.

We wish them all success, although we would have more confidence in the movement if so many of the delegates had not worn bloomer dress. Moses makes war upon that style of apparel in Deuteronomy xxii. 5: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto man." Nevertheless we favor every effort to stop the extravagant use of dry goods and millinery.

We have, however, no sympathy with the implication that women are worse than men in this respect. Men wear all they can without interfering with their locomotion, but man is such an awkward creature he cannot find any place on his body to hang a great many fineries. He could not get round in Wall street with eight or ten flounces, and a big-handled parasol, and a mountain of back hair. Men wear less than women, not because they are more moral, but because they cannot stand it. As it is, many of our young men are padded to a superlative degree, and have corns and bunions on every separate toe from wearing shoes too tight.

Neither have we any sympathy with the implication that the present is worse than the past in matters of dress. Compare the fashion plates of the seventeenth century with the fashion plates of the nineteenth, and you decide in favor of our day. The women of Isaiah's time beat anything now. Do we have the kangaroo fashion Isaiah speaks of--the daughters who walked with "stretched forth necks?" Talk of hoops! Isaiah speaks of women with "round tires like the moon." Do we have hot irons for curling our hair? Isaiah speaks of "wimples and crisping pins." Do we sometimes wear glasses astride our nose, not because we are near-sighted, but for beautification? Isaiah speaks of the "glasses, and the earrings, and the nose jewels." The dress of to-day is far more sensible than that of a hundred or a thousand years ago.

But the largest room in the world is room for improvement, and we would cheer on those who would attempt reformation either in male or female attire. Meanwhile, we rejoice that so many of the pearls, and emeralds, and amethysts, and diamonds of the world are coming in the possession of Christian women. Who knows but that the spirit of ancient consecration may some day come upon them, and it shall again be as it was in the time of Moses, that for the prosperity of the house of the Lord the women may bring their bracelets, and earrings, and tablets and jewels? The precious stones of earth will never have their proper place till they are set around the Pearl of Great Price.