Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1912 — Woman [ARTICLE]

Woman

OF COURSE EVERT woman’s did every man’s greatest desire Is tor happiness. That la A blanket wish that covers all other wishes, and every other wish is simply a mesas to that But If a good fairy should suddenly appear. as in the eld nursery tale, and otter Every woman her three resweets of the gods, it doesn’t take any prophetess to tell what she would ask. She would ask, without even stopping to debate the question, to be supernally beautiful, incredibly rich, and romantically and passionately loved, because to the feminine fancy to be a living picture, a millionairess, and an affinity, fills the cup of bliss so toll it slushes over. Yet the gratification of none, nor all of these w.shea, would make a women happy unless they could be backed up by two more wishes —one that they might be made eternal, and the woman a interest in them might not pall. It were folly to ask for be&nty unless it could be made perpetual, as, alas, it cannot be in this changing life. No agony can be greater than that of the woman who sees the years steal the bloom from her'cheek, the luster from her hair, the brilliance from her eyes, and knows herself powerless to prevent the ravages of age. It Is better to have been born homely than to have to listen to people toll you how you have faded. Nor is there any tragedy more complete than that of the woman, who, having had great wealth, loses It and ie reduced to poverty, unless it is that of the woman who has nothing but money and who starves in the midst of her gold for real, love, real friends, real interests In life. The wish to be loved of all of the average woman’s three wishes would come nearest to bringing her happiness wereit gratified, but even that would need to be accompanied by a large hill of particulars and specifications, such as (a) must be leved by the one particular HE; (b) love must Be of the especial variety that suite my taste; (e) the temperature of love must always be at the boiling point; (d) love must never falter, but must be good for as much poetry when I am fat and forty and when I am slim and twenty, and must be guaranteed to he water tight and weather proof and not to be affected by my temper, nor curl papers nor wrappers nor leathery steaks and heavy biscuits; (e), love must have enough ginger in It to keep my appetite for It perpetually keen, to I won’t tire of a dally diet of too much sweets. Now to my thinking if a woman were given three wishes she should ask: 1 , Fr good health. For a genius for little things. To love. j To have health '“means to posses/ beauty of a type that does not fade. It also includes good nature, because practically all irritability and illtemper are caused by shaken nerves, and it assures its happy possessor an unending fountain of enjoyment and pleasure, since whether life is worth living or not, depends entirely upon the liver. It is the mentally and physically diseased women who fill the divorce courts, and burden the air with their lamentations over being forsaken and neglected by their husbands and sweethearts. The woman who has good health bolds her own. Next to the good health 1 should wish, being a woman, for the genlue for small things —to be eternally interested in small-beer gossip—what the neighbors next door have tor dinner; hoar many nblfled petticoats Mrs. Smith has in wash; to be thrilled to my marrow about the cut of a sleeve qr the king of a skirt; le be ahle to he utterly absorbed in my own hops*. my own church, my . own Browning society. And, above all, I should pray the gods to grant me that I might always think my’ particular John the oracle of the world. Than I .should,#pk to love. For a woman not to have been loved is a misfortune, bur tor her not to love Is a tragedy. She may weary of the noblsstlove of the noblest heart; she mar find a thousand imperfections in the moat chivalrous lover,, but her own love knows no tiring, and it gilds the meanest object and turns it into a god. In love and In service to. the adored one, a .woman finds her highest happiness; .and, if she has of her own a mAn and a child on Whom to lavish her affections, she doeg not need to ask anything else of fate. She has all wishes bunched in one.