Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (June 28, 1890)
WEST SHORE. 815 loveliest diamond pin for me so what could I do? You really can not be cross with a man who is always giving you a beauti ful thing, you know." Oh, frivolous, light-hearted woman! What a poor, weak thing you are! To barter away your rights, your womanly feelings, your pride, for a dazzling gem that holds only a flame of beautiful light a glittering thing that has neither heart nor soul ! This is the kind of woman that a man marries and ever afterward holds in contempt the woman who may be bribed to overlook bis faults. What is there in such a woman strong enough and unselfish enough to hold a man back when he is tempted to do wrong? Sh cares so much more for her own pleasure and vanity than she does for him, that she will allow him to drift into wrong-doing without one remonstrance, if only he will bring her a costly gift. If men would but reflect that the wife who will accept a bribe will probably be the mother of men who will, in turn, accept a bribe, they would hesitate before they marry. This blight in a nature is so easily detected, too', that no man can plead that he did not find it out until it was too late. He may have willfully shut his eyes to it, or he may have thought that it would be rather convenient to have Buch a wife ; but, Oh ! he will bitterly regret it all his life after ward. He will scorn her and he will hate himself each time ' he gives her a showy bauble as the price of his sin against her. He will t ometimes groan to himself : "My God ! If she loved me as some women love their husbands, she would not forgive me; and if I did not know she would forgive me, I would be proud to do what is right for her sake ! " There may be, now and then, among men an angel one who never did wrong, and who never had the faintest inclina tion to do wrong, who never felt the need of woman's gentle, restraining influence; but I, for one, am skeptical about his existence. I should have to see him, to follow him about, to be with him each hour of the day and of the night yea, I should have to be his very inner conscience itself before I could place any very alarming degree of faith in him. I think almost every man finds that he needs a woman's love and a woman's hand to start his feet in the right way, and to keep them there. The world jostled in between him and his mother a man can not always be with his mother but the woman who loves him ah ! some things that would only be grievances to his mother are deadly insults to the woman who loves him. He likes to feel that he must do what is right for her sake that there is no other alternative. He wants to be able to say to his old associates, with a great, strong thrill of pride: " Oh, no ; I couldn't do that, now, you know." As much as to say: " You may do it; you have no one to love and honor, no one to whom you are proud to be tender and true." I have such a firm faith in the good side of man's nature that I will not believe that there is a man so utterly mean but that h'e hates to think he can buy forgiveness for his sins ; but that his soul cries out each time he does so, " My God ! If only she loved me instead of herself ! " Far up in the corner of my room is a big, black cobweb, and a big, black spider dwells therein. He has dwelt there quite a year now, and, although many surreptitious feminine glances of horror at the wretched housekeeping of some people steal up to that corner, my happy spider is never disturbed. I think he almost loves me now ; he comes down often, dropping inch by inch, by a thm, golden thread, and he runs, rapidly and twinkling legged, over my table and papers, pausing for mo ments at a time to look at me with bright, unwinking eyes and motionless body. Happy, happy fellow! He has his health, his spirits, and his home with a tiny sweetheart locked therein where no covetous eyes may find her what more could he ask to make him happy? But one day ah, me! some one else will come into this room with an alert eye for cobwebB and a strong hand to remove them, and then then when he is homeless and friendless and hopeless my spider may under stand how right down good I was to him. The household magazines are always telling us how to care for our invalids ; and when one has read of all the little atten tions and tendernesses in the way of constant care and smiles and cheery words; in the giving of light and air and sunshine, of flowers, of fruits, of delicacies, and all the thousand and one little things that they picture as being absolutely necessary if invalids are to live and breathe at all, one can not but call to mind the many, many thousands of people who lie from year's end to year's end on beds of suffering, with only the bare neces sities of life; to whom suffering is bread, despair is drink, and patience is dessert ; to whom a kind word or a cheery smile is like a God-given holiday to a lonely child, and to whom a flower is a glimpse of heaven. Oh, God, pity and cheer all invalids who mutt lie within four walls, and who may never be out in the fields and the woods ! But let thoBe who suffer on beds of down, with many comforts and many friends, remember those who lie with burning heads and uncheered hearts in dark rooms that know neither sunshine nor smiles. Bismarck held the opinion that woman's politics lay in the kitchen and the nursery, and that they should have interests outside of these spheres only when their husbands were con tent to rock the cradle. One can understand now what a delight it must have been to Victoria's daughter to outwit a prig who believes women should be but little, dim reflections of the big, brilliant husbands. Men who hold the broadest views upon such subjects have the happiest and most contented wives wives who are so satisfied to truBt to their husbands' judgment and justice that they never fuel it necessary to assert their lights, because they always have them. French corsets are fitted upon real, live models. Every large factory hat its line of models of faultless figures corres ponding with the different sizes. They stand about in the fitting-rooms, says the Argonaut, dressed only in long, plain gowns of Boft silk, which do not affect the fit in the least, and stand while a seam is taken up here and let out there, a gore sharpened, an arc widened all for the sake of making some . ill-bhaped woman look finely formed. There is a young woman in an eastern town who has a mag nificent diamond necklace set with thirteen single stones of rare value, bhe sweetly confesses that each gem was once in an engagement ring, as she had been engaged thirteen times, and as she did not wish to return them for fear of wounding the men's feelings (some people's honor is so sensitive) she bad them made into a composite necklace of tenderest associa tions. Miss Harriet Hosmor has announced that she will present to the art institute, of Chicago, her cast of the clasped hands of Mr. and Mrs. Browning, which was cast at Home some years ago. It is valued very highly for its rare beauty and senti ment and because of the allusion made to it In Hawthorne's " Marble Faun." Our every good deed gives ns a foretaste only of heaven ; but our every wrong one gives us the full bitterness of hell.