Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1918 — When a Woman Wants More Than a Pacifist’s Advice [ARTICLE]

When a Woman Wants More Than a Pacifist’s Advice

Ry HARRIET CULVER

“Someone is always taking the joy out of life by asking me 1 to take sides with them upon some matter that’s agitating them,’’ said the Impatient Woman, complainingly, as she stopped pursing her lips into prunes and prisms over her purling and dropped into plain knitting with a sigh of relief. “But when it comes to taking sides in a matter that concerns apartment house dwellers and riddles all the tenets of the Declaration of Independence impartially, it seems to me that I, for one, should Hesitate before galloping in where angels fear to tread. “Not that I don’t think hundreds of women weary of wranglings with owners and janitors over the vexed matter of distributing favors would be plumb tickled to death if some determined individual should take a stand and demand the right to buy her milk and her ice -just as impartially as she patronizes the grocers and the dry goods merchants in her locality, for it does sort of send an indignant shiver down one’s spinal column to feel that one must submit to dictation or even espionage upon such trifling matters. “I tried to pacify the friend who came to me with all her feathers ruffled over a little controversy she had just had over faking ice from the janitor and the indifference with which he had repeatedly served her with the smallest pieces of ice, whereas, as a top-floor dweller, she had been‘paying the highest price and might reasonably have expected she’d be given at least a fair disposition of the spoils. i “And I tried to laugh into good humor another belligerent who had insisted upon changing milkmen, only to find that orders had been given barring other than the favored firm from having access to the building, but I’m not sure yet that I did much to calm the troubled watesp. I suggested to the first woman that she contrive some sort of window .box and give the iceman the cold shoulder this winter, and I told the other one to give her milk order to her grocer, or else lug home a bottle of the lacteal fluid every night in her knitting bag, but, as I said, I m not sure but I’ve gained a reputation of being more than a mediocre Job’s comforter, at that. When a woman comes to you good and mad she wants more than a pacifist’s advice, I find. Still, it ought to help if I become the willing listener and let her get some pent-up indignation out of her system, don’t you think?”