Chapter 2

A TALE OF WOE.

"Why is it that, in more than two-thirds of families the wife and mother bears not only the children but the burdens and heartaches? The husband supplies the _money_ (generally not enough), the wife has the care of a growing and increasing family, the best of everything is saved for 'Father' and he is waited on, etc. If the children annoy him he goes to his club; if the wife dies, why there are plenty more women for the asking. Thousands of women are simply starving for Love and men are either willfully blind or wholly and utterly selfish. You possibly know that this is quite true. Another thing that has caused me many a time to question everything: During the Christmas holidays many times I have seen half-clad, hungry, shivering little ones gazing longingly into the wonderful show windows, wanting probably just one toy, while children no more worthy drive by in carriages, having more than they want. Love, home, mother, everything; on the other hand hunger, want, blues (many times), and both God's children. Let us hear what you have to say about this." B. B.

Why does the mother in two-thirds of the families bear not only the children but the burdens and heartaches? _Because she is too thoughtless and inert not to_. It is _easier_ to submit to bearing children than it is to rise up and take command of her own body. It is easier to carry burdens than to wake up and _fire_ them. It is easier to "bear" things and grumble than it is to kick over the traces and _change_ them. To be sure, most women are yet under the hypnotic spell of the old race belief that it is woman's duty to "submit" herself to any kind of an old husband; but that is just what I said--women find it easier to go through life half asleep rather than to _think_ for themselves. Paul says a woman is _not_ to think, she is to ask her husband to think for her. (At least that is what the translators _say_ Paul says. Privately, I have my suspicions that those manly translators helped Paul to say a bit more than he meant to.) It is _easier_ to let her husband think for her even when she doesn't like his thoughts. So she uses her brain in _grumbling_ instead of thinking.

People who don't think are ruled by _feeling_. Women feel. They feel not only for themselves but for other people. They shoulder the burdens of the whole family and a few outside the family. They do it themselves-- because it is _easier_ to feel than to think. Nobody walks up to a woman and says, "Here--I have a burden that's very heavy--_you_ carry it whilst I go off and have a good time." No. The woman simply _takes_ the burden and hugs it and "feels" it--and _prides herself on doing it_. And maybe the thing _she_ hugs as a burden is no burden at all to the other people in the family. My dear, women as a rule are chumps. They'd rather feel _anything_ than to _think_ the right thing.

Now I'd like to know if you think a woman who has made herself round- shouldered and wrinkled and sour-visaged over burdens--_anybody's_ burdens, real or fancied--is such a creature as attracts love or consideration from _anybody_. Of course she is not. It is no wonder she receives no love or consideration from her husband or anybody else. She has made a pack mule out of herself for the carrying of utterly useless burdens that nobody _wants_ carried and the carrying of which benefits nobody; and now that she has grown ugly and sour at the business she need not feel surprised at being slighted. And she need not blame folks for slighting her. _She_ assumed the burdens; _she_ carried them; _she_ wore herself out at it; it is all her own fault. It was _easier_ for her to feel, and grumble, than to wake up and THINK, and change things.

Nobody who _thinks_ will carry a single burden for even a single day. He knows that fretting and worrying and grumbling only _double the burden_ and accomplish nothing.

Woman has _built herself_ for bearing children and burdens. When she gets tired of her bargain she will _think her way out of the whole thing_. In the meantime the harder the burdens grow the more quickly she will revolt and make of herself something besides a burden bearer.

It is all nonsense to talk about the men being "willfully blind or wholly and utterly selfish." No man _wants_ a burden-bearing, round- shouldered, wrinkled and fagged-out wife. No man respects or loves a woman who will "submit" to bearing unlimited burdens or babies either. And if a woman "submits" and yet keeps up a continual grumbling and nagging about it, a man simply despises her.

What every man _hopes_ for when he marries a woman, is that she will be a bright, trim, _reasonable comrade._ If she is even half-way that she will get all the love and consideration she can long for. But in three- quarters of the cases of marriage the woman degenerates into a whining bundle of _thought-less_ FEELINGS done up in a slattern's dress and smelling like a drug-shop. Her husband in despair gives up trying to understand her, or to love her either.

The woman in such a case is apt to suffer most. Why not? _She makes it the business of her life to "suffer."_ She _prides_ herself on how much she has had to "suffer," and "bear." She cultivates her "feelings" to the limit. A man thinks it "unmanly" to _give way_ to "feelings." So he uses all his wits to keep from doing so, and to enable him to hide his own disappointment and make the best of life as he finds it.

A man uses his best _judgment_ when he meets disappointment. A woman trots out her "feelings" and her best pocket-handkerchief, and calls in the neighbors. So the woman gets the lion's share of "sympathy"--which means that all the other women get out _their_ best handkerchiefs and try to imagine just how _they_ would "feel" if in her place.

Of course there _are_ exceptions. I _have_ heard of men who wept and retailed their woes; and I have heard of women with gumption.

The woman who wrote the letter at the head of this chapter is a feel-er, not a thinker. She looks at the forlorn, bedraggled specimens of her own sex and "_feels_" with them, never THINKING that the women themselves have anything to do with making their conditions. She "feels" with the woman because _she_ is a woman. Being an unthinking creature she cannot "feel" for the man at all.

Woman is the weaker creature for no other reason than that she lives in her "feelings."

Man is the stronger for no other reason than that he uses his wits and his will to _control_ his feelings. "B. B." has seen children gazing into shop windows. Immediately she imagines how _she_ would "feel" if in their places. She does not stop to THINK that in all probability the simple act of gazing into the window may bring more real joy to those children than the _possession_ of the whole windowful of toys would bring to some rich man's child. She does not _think_ that life consists not in possessions or environment, but in the _ability to use_ possessions or environment. If she were an Edwin Abbey or a Michael Angelo she would gaze on our chromo-bedecked walls and work herself up into a great state of "feeling" because we had to have such miserable daubs instead of real works of art. If she saw us gazing on an Abbey or Angelo picture she would weep tears to think we couldn't have such pictures instead of those hideous bright chromos on our walls. It would never occur to her that we might be privately comparing her Abbeys and Angelos with our chromos, _and wondering how anybody could possibly see beauty in the Abbeys and Angelos_.

About nine-tenths of women's so-called "sympathy" is just about as foolish and misplaced as that. If "B. B." would go up and get acquainted with some of those small youngsters she sees gazing into the shop windows she would find some of her illusions dispelled. She would find among them less "longing" than she thinks, and more wonder and criticism and pure curiosity--such as she would find in her own heart if she were gazing at a curio collection.

I remember a large family of very small boys that I used to "feel" for, very deeply. Poor little pinched, ragged looking fellows they were, and always working before and after school hours. I gave them nickels and dimes and my children's outgrown clothes, and new fleece lined gloves for their blue little hands. They kept the clothes hung up at home and the gloves stuffed in their pants pockets. And one day I discovered that every one of those small youngsters had a _bank account_--something I had never had in my life! They lived as they _liked_ to live, and I had been harrowing my feelings and carrying their (?) burdens for nothing.

This world is _not_ a pitiful place. It is a lovely great world, full of all sorts of people, every one of whom _exactly fits into_ his conditions.

And the loveliest thing of all about this bright, blessed old world is that there is not a man, woman or child in it who cannot _change_ his environment if he doesn't like the one he now occupies. He can THINK his way into anything.

A real, deep, tender feeling will prompt one to do all he can to alleviate distress or add to the world's joy. _Real_ feeling prompts to action. But this sentimental slush which slops over on anything and everything in general is nothing but an imitation of the real thing. To sympathize to the extent of _acting_ is good; to harrow up the feelings when you cannot or will not act, is simply weakness.

"Feeling" is subject to the same law as water. Take away its banks and it spreads all over creation and becomes a stagnant slough of despond. Confine it by banks of _common-sense_ and _will_ and it grows deep and tender and powerful, and bears blessings on its bosom.

The professional pity-er is adding to the sum total of the world's misery.

The world is like "sweet Alice Ben Bolt"; it laughs with delight when you give it a smile, and gets out its pocket handkerchief to weep with you when you call it "Poor thing!"

Then it cuts its call short and runs around the corner to tell your neighbor what a tiresome old thing you are anyway.

Never you mind the tribulations you can't help, dearie. Just wake up and _be_ the brightest, happiest, sweetest thing you know how to be, and the world will-be that much better off.