The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 11, 1904, Page 6

THE SAN. FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. A.__.« N B e~ — Sotw il 6 S & POLITT7CsS. JUS T NOW WWNARN T 2 _WoRD 1IN, i CCURSED " PAZEd W orrmzr B WorLD. OF 7HE, \ s < was m than y beast of the field which the Lord had made,” tempted nother crbidden ir of mankind to eat of the uit, the Voice in the Garden aid 10 he will greatly multiply o It can scarcely be denied curse has been fulfilled So and incessant I been the of wolan since endary ount of the creation of the world sal vne canuot heip thinking the whole Lus s somewhat uafair, it—for being “‘béguiled” d who was known han any other, ndants of her sex o zuffer cen injustice is manif ary—yet it would wed poor Accursed Eve tll now. I will greatly iy sorrow!” And sorrow has tied to such an aggravated fortunat wual to men, sta women, indi- , O God, for * thus their vrnetiins little lowe except those here the Jew- ish woman suddenly found out her latent powers and employed them to advartage, the Jewish man made her ietch ard carry for him like a veritabie beast of burden. He yoked her to his plow with oxen—he sold and ex- changed her with his friends as frecly as any other article of commerce—his “base uses” of her were various, and seldom to his credit—while, such as they were, they only lasted so long as they satisfied his immediate humor. When done with she was “cast out.” The kind of “casting out” to which she was subjected is not always explained. But It may be taken for granted that in many instances she was either killed outright, or turned adrift to die of star- vation and weariness. The Jews in their Biblical days were evidently not much affected by her griefs. They were God's “chosen” people—and that women were the mothers of the whole “chosen” race appeared to call for no claim on their chivalrous tenderness or consideration. Looking back through the vista of time to that fabled Eden, when she listened to the tempting of the “sub- til” one, the wrongs and injustices en- dured by Accursed Eve at the hand of Coward Adam make up a calendar of appalling, almost superhuman crime. Man has taken the full license allowed him by the old Genesis story, which, by the way, was of course invented by man himself for his own convenience. “Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee,” And among all tribes, and in all nations he has ruled, with o rod of fron! The Christian dispensation interfered some- what with his former reign of tyranny, for with the birth of Christ came, to a certain extent, the idealization and beatification of womdnhood. The Greeks and Romans, however, had a latent glimmering idea of what woman in all her glory should be, and of what she might possibly attain to In the fu- ture—for all their grandest sym- bols of life, such as truth, beauty, jus- tice, fortune, fame, wisdom, are repre- sented by their sculptors clothed in the female form divine. It is a curious fact Save and that in those ear periods of ciyiliza- tion, when literature and art were just dawning upon the world, man, though aggregating to his own ego0 nearly everything in the unive paused beé fore representing himself u figure O Justice, mer or wisdom. He evident- iy realized his unfitness to stand, even in marble, before the world as a sym- bol of moral virtue. He therefore, with a grace which we!ll became him in those “pagan” days, bent the knee 1o all noble attributes of humanity as rep- re ted in won Her fair face, her beauteous figur eted him in all his sacred temples of worship—as Ve and Diana shé smiled u Y goddess of Fortune or Chance cepted his votive wreaths Fan e or Victory she gave him blessing when- ever he went to war or ed in tri- ld—and this was 1g-forth of wo- nd better possi- of her long and umph from the the embrvo or s man’'s higher fut bilities, when the d cruel probation shou accomplished and her “curse” lifted. There are signs and tok is happy end is sight. i Bve is be- ginning to have a good time. And the only fear now is lest she should over- step the mark of her weli-deserving liberty and run headlong into license. For F with or without cause, is nat- urally ulsive and credulous, and be- ing too uften forgetful of ttle in- cident which occurred to h in the matter of the tree of good and evil, is still far too prone to listen to the be- suiling of “subtil” personages worse “than any beast of the fleld which the Lord hath made.” Accursed Eve, having broken several of her old-time fetters and beginning to feel her feet as well as her wings, just now wants a word in politics. As one of her cursed daughters, I confess I wonder that she should wish to put herself to so much unnecessary trouble, seeing that she has the whole game in her hands. Politice are generally hustled along by Coward Adam—unless by rarest chance Brave Adam, his twin brother, suddenly steps forth unexpect- edly, when there ensues what is called a “collapse of the government.” In any question, small or great, Accursed Eve has only to offer Coward Adam the ap- ple and he will eat it. Which metaphor implies that even in politics, if she only moves him round gradually to her own views in that essentially womanly way which, while persuading, seems not to persuade, he is bound to yleld. Person- ally speaking, I do not know any man who is not absolutely under the thumb of at least one woman. And I will not believe that there {s any woman so fee- ble, so stupid, so lost to the power and charm of her own individuality, as not to be able to influence quite half a dozen men. This being the case, what does Accursed Eve want with a vote? If she is so unhappy, so ugly, so vepul- slve, so deformed in mind and man- ners as to have no influence at all on any creature of the male sex whatever, neither father, nor brother, nor uncle, nor cousin, nor lover, nor husband, nor friend—would the opinion of such a one be of any consequence or her vote of any value? I assert nothing—I only ask the question. Speaking personally as a woman, I have no politics and want none. I only want the British empire to be first and foremost in everything,and I tender my sincerest homage to all the men of every party who will honestly work to- ward that end. These being my senti- ments, I deprecate any strong separate parliamentary attitude on the part of Accursed Eve. I say she has much better, wider work to do than take part in tow-rows with the rather undigni- N2 v _'. oI\ 7 fiea personages who hive recently been making somewhat of a bear-garden of the House of Commons. That she would make a good M. P.were she a man I am quite sure, but as a woman I know she “goes one hetter” in becom- ing the wife of an M. P. Accursed FEve! Mother of the World! What high thing does she seek?. Mother of Christianity itself, she stands before us, # figure symbolic Il good. her Holy Child in her rms, her sweet, using, prjverful face bending over it in gravely tender devotion. From her ~ soft breast humanity springs renewed—she rep- resents the youth. the hope and love of all mapkind. Wronged as she has been, and as she often still is, her patience never fails. Deceived, she mends her broken shell with pearl” f é @ There is something exhilarating about a campaign. Whether the object be to elect a President or conquer a nation, or endow a university or win a wife. Its prosecution arrests attention, and makes the blood tingle. We admire the picturesque features, forecast the out- come, and let our sympathies go out to the party whom we consider best en- titled to win. No summer can be utter- ly dull when a vigorous campazign is proceeding; no one can be wholly inert and impassive when somewhere in the ‘world there is the shock of contending arms, the bugle summons to heroic en- deavor, the stern pursuit of some great goal. But there are certaln moral consid- erations involved in campaigns. One may be summed up in this injunction: Be fair to your opponent. Party pre- Judices do not, as a rule, foster a strict sense of justice. It is so much' easier to misunderstand and misrepresent your opponent than to state his posi- tion clearly and honestly; so much easier to asperse the motives of the other fellows than to admit that many of them may be as honest and patri- otic as ourselves. Politicians bred in the bone, in particular, find it hard to conceive of an action as ever being done without regard to its political ef- fect. But surely it is conceivable that a man running for office may write a letter or send a telegram at the dlc- tates of simple duty and honor, and not because he hopes to subserve his personal Interests by it. How little, after all, the conventional politiclan understands the inbred Imstinct of Americans for fair play and straight dealing! But whenever a man in pub- lic life, like Mr. Jerome or Mr. Folk moves forward on the sheer merits of his cause and regardless of the reflex influence on himself, he stands to lose rather than gain In the public esti- mate. =\~ A —~ . \ qV 2~ . CAMPAIGNS CAMPAIGNING | and still trusts on. Her sweet credu- lousness is the same as it ever was— the “subtil” one can always overreach her through her too ready confidence i the idea that *“all things work to- gether for good.” Her “curse” is the crime of loving too well—believing too much. Should a *subtil” one say he loves her, she honestly thinks he dces. When he turns out, as often happens in some cases, tosbe looking after her money rather than herself, she can starcely force her mind to realize that he is not so much a hero as a cad. When she has to earn her own living in any of the artistic pro- fessions she will frequently tell all her plans, hopes and ambitions to “subtil” O Another rule for campaigners is to keep the main issue in sight. The temptation is to spend time and effort over minor concerns, rather than go straight to the heart of the matter. The manly way is to set forth in bold, strong colors the object of your cam- paign, to define sharply the difference between you and your competitor, if there is any difference on vital points, and to adhere tenaciously to that cen- tral object. Before a man can get my vote for his candidate, I want him to tell me in clear, terse language, why he, of all men on the earth at this time, ought to have it. General Grant used to say: “I do not care to know so much where the ‘enemy 1is going to strike; what I want to know i{s where I am going to strike.” It is well also to remember that campalgns . are won by substantial methods. Transparencies and pro- cessions, opening guns and closing rallies, banners and buttons, the flood of oratory and various devices known to managers for enlisting popular in- terest are all well enough so far as they g0, but the redoubts at Gettysburg were won at the point of the bayonet and in no other way. The American people is more and more disposed to take its politics seriously, to respond sooner to logical argument and sane appeal, rather than to the flimsy ex- f;(]llenu for manufacturing party cap- Finally, we ought all to learn to keep cool during campaigns. What- ever the outcome we shall have to go on living after they are over and whether the result accords with our desires and efforts, we may well be- leve that the unlverse is not going to smash. “Why so hot, little man,” ex- postulates Carlyle, with one who was wrought up to fever heat over somer matter. Party loyalty, clvic enthusi- asm, glorying in this or that cause are legitimate and desirable, but they need not rob us of our serenity, our good temper and our faith in overruling Providence. THE PARSON. WHICH, (wor 70 ones with the most engaging frank- ness. The “subtil” ones naturally take every advantage of her and some of them put a stopgap on her efforts if they can. A good many people in London know privately the story of a certain beautiful woman in society who composed an admirable opera and played the melodies of it over to a third-rate musician, who professed to be her lover. The third-rate rascal stole all her music and produced the opera as his own. She had no remedy, as to bring the matter before the law would have necessitated making pub- lic the intimacy between her and the robber of her ideas. So she held her peace; and of her broken heart and ruined hopes the world at large is ignorant. But no wonder that like the hero of Swinburne's “Triumph of Time” she says she “will hate sweet music her whole life long.” How many times men have tried to steal away the honor of a woman's name and fame in literature need not here be chronicled. Of how many books, bearing a woman’s name on the title page is it said, “Her husband helped her,” or “She got Mr. So-and-So to write the descriptive part!” George Eliot has often been accused of being assisted in her novels by Mr. Lewes A little Incident—touching enough to my mind—is related in the memoirs of Charlotte Bronte. After her marriage and when she was expecting the birth of a child, she was reading some of the first chapters of an intended new. novel to her husband, who, as he lis- tened, said in that peculiarly encour- aging way common to men who have gifted women to deal with, “You seem to be repeating yourself. You must take care not to repeat yourself.” Poor little soul! She never “repeated” her- gelf—she just died. No ome can tell how her husband's thoughtless phrase may have teased or perplexed her sen- sitive mind, in a critical condition of health, and helped to hasten the fatal end. Edward FitzGerald’s celebrity as a scholar is not, and never will be wide enough to blot out from remembrance his brutal phrase -on’hearing of the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning— “Mrs. Browning is dead. Thank God we shall have no more Aurora Leighs.” ‘While, far more creditable to Alger- non Charles Swinburne than his phrase of himself now unfortunately affixed to the newly collected edition of his works, is the praise he bestows on this noble woman-genius in his preface to her great poem. I quote one line of it here— “No English contemporary profession has left us work so full of living re.” flFor once, and in this particular in- stance, Accursed Eve in literature has, in such a verdict, won her merited onors. llBut as a rule honors are withheld from her and the laurel is fiiched from her brows by Coward Adam ere she has time to wear it. One flagrant case is well known, of a man who, having lived entirely on a woman's literary eal gs for years, went about in the clothés her pen had paid for, among the persons to whom, through her influence, he had been introduced, boasting that he assisted her to write the greater part of her books. To thelr shame, be it sald, a great many people believed him, and not until he was dead, and the woman went on writing her books as before, did they VF SHE ONLY PIOVES (702 ROUN O GRADUALLY 70 HER T2 ENTIALLY y A e PERSURDING, SEEITSS PERSUMDE,"” 10 OWLAS VIEWS IN WOIMANLY WAY even begin to see the wrong they had done her. They would not have dared to calumniate the false boaster as they calumniated the innocent hard work er. The boaster was a man—the worker a woman—therefore the dis- honor of passing off literary work not one’s own must naturally belong to Accursed Eve, so they thought—not to Coward Adam! Of their humiliation when all the truth was known, history sayeth nothing. Yet, with all the weight of her curse more or less upon her, and with all her sorrows, shattered ideals, wrecked hopes and lost loves, Accursed Eve is still the most beautiful, the most per- fect figure in all creation. Her fail- ings, her vanities, her weaknesses, her sins, arise in the first place from love —even if afterward, through Coward Adam’s ready encouragement, they de- generate into vice and animalism. Her first impulse in earliest youth is a desire to please Adam—the same im- pulse precisely which led her to offer him the forbidden apple in the first days of their mutual acquaintance. She wishes to charm him—to win his heart—to endear herself to him in a thousand tender ways—to wind her- self irretrievably round his life. It she succeeds in this aim she is invari- ably happy and virtuous. But if she is made to feel that she cannot hold im on whom her thoughts are cen- tered—if his professed love for her only proves weak and false when put to trial—if he finds it easy to forget both sentiment and courtesy, and is quick to add Insult to injury, then all the finer and more delicate emotions of her nature become warped and un- strung—and though she enduréd her sufferings because she must, he re- sents it and takes vengeance when she can. Of resentfulness against wrong and revenge for Injustice come what are called “bad women.” Yet I would humbly venture to maintain that even these “bad” were not bad in the first instance. They were born in the usu- al way, with the usual Eve impulse— the desire to please, not themselves, but the opposite sex. If their instinctive efforts have been met with cruelty, oppression, neglect, desertion and sometimes the most heartless and cowardly betrayal, they can scarcely be blamed if they play the same tricks on the unloving, dis- loyal churls for whom they have per- haps sacrificed the best part of their lives. For innocent faith and trusting love are the best part of every woman's life; and when these are destroyed by the brutalizing touch of some Coward Adam the woman may well claim com-~ pensation for her soul's murder. Accursed Eve! Still she loves—to find herself fooled and cheated; still she hopes, even while hope eludes her— still she waits, for what she may never win—still she prays prayers that may never be answered—still she rears the men -of the future, wondering per- chance whether any of them will ever help to do her justice—will ever place her where she should be as the ac- knowledged queenly “helpmeet” of her stronger but less enduring partner! Beaytiful, frall, trusting, loving Ac- Eve! She bends beneath the curse—but the clouds are lifting—there is light in the sky of her future dawn! And it may be that a worse malediction than the one pronounced in Eden will fall on those who make her burden of life heavier to bear!