Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1886 — Envions Women’s Tongues. [ARTICLE]

Envions Women’s Tongues.

If men talked of women as women talk of women, if men talked of men as women talk of women, we should have the early Florentine days back again, 'when every one carved up his dear friend before breakfast. So we quote the old London joke—Men’s (and women’s) coruew recti— the misapplication of the Hosier’s Latinity—as the text of a few remarks on one of the great social evils of the day, the slanders which women dare to propagate about women—a crime which is to the nineteenth century what poison was to the sixteenth. When men speak against women, they know well that, although the days of the duello are past, and perhaps no angry sword may leap from its scabbard, yet the horsewhip is not yet laid on the shelf, and that men have been severely furnished for allowing a word' to drop rom profane lips anent the honor of wife or sister. Men are also constitutionally cautious. A boy learns at school, by the vivacious instruction of a punched head, that he must be careful what he says, and he carries with him through life his sense of responsibility; but with women there is no such responsibility. A girl is praised for telling a story well, and she falls into the habit of amusing the company. A girl who has the fatal gift of imitation, and who can go through life with the power of awakening a laugh—perhaps at her dramatic comprehension of what is ridiculous in her friends, her talenbat reproducing a lisp or a stammer—is sure to be encouraged in this very dangerous abuse of power. Then the strife between women is very bitter—particularly amongst fashionable women—for the possession of the appearance of belledom.

Each woman wishes, such is the degradation of modern society, to be notorious, either for the excessive extravagance of her attire or the reputation oi a successful coquette. Envy is the natural follower of such ambition, and the business lof detraction begins. If there is a scandal started about a young and pretty woman, men smile and ask: “What woman startedit?” If there is an inuendo or a disagreeable name attached to unattractive woman, it generally comes from another woman. Society is full of this kind of M»it, as: Three plain women were once known as “Plague, Pestilence, and Famine”— too literal and descriptive for a masculine mot; two sisters, as “Scylla and Charybdis;” two others, as “Champagne, Sparkling and Extra Dry,” and so on—the list would be endless. These epithets adhere; they are of that small and vitiated currency that can be handed from hand to hand, receiving added soil from each not too clean receptacle. They do not injure character, but they do hurt sensitive feelings. Sometimes a perfectly gentle and good woman, the possessor of a fine voice or a fresh complexion, has s<? irritated a rival that she has been hounded to death by envious tongues. No one should be so weak as to care, but unfortunately, modest and gpod women are sometimes like the ermine, a stain means death. The only punishment which women of scandalous tongue receive is the one which is, after all, perhaps, the most severe. They grow people shun them; they are “left out. ” In one case in New York, where a vivacious lady had attacked the character of another, the attacked party went to the ferocious extent of summoning the scandal-monger to court, but agreed to withdraw her suit if the aggressor would write an apologetic note saying that she had manufactured the story. This was done, and the precious autograph lies open on the parlor table. It would be a golden day for society if women would guard their speech.— Boston Traveller.