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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 22, 1914)
TITE SUNDAY OREGOXTAX, -PORTLAND, NOVEMBER 22, 1914. -HIS WOMEN M UT AMAHS RCUTIV Meddlesome Matties in the Affairs of Men Often Ruin the Brightest Futures Which Might Have Been. These Ladies Are Self-Made Family Guard ians to Whom Fate Is a Myth of the Far Cone Age. 6t BY RITA REKSB. rHEN five women with noth ing- to do start to mapping- out a man's life for him " In the play from which his quota-' tion Is taken the sentence is also left unfinished. The appealing gesture up ward to the gods of chance and of pro tection is expressive enough and elo quent enough to be understood at least by most of the men present. One woman with nothing to do, most of us have had occasion to observe, is el menace to any man's peace of mind If she turns her attention to directing the channel of his life, and at that without his desiring her to do so but five! It Is black despair to be so feminized. "Oh, I am getting better. I can see callers, yes " is from the same play, "but I'm not strong enough yet to have my relatives come to see me." .What man is'ever strong enough to have a woman relative with' mapping out plans for his life pay him a visit? This play brings to mind a phase of feminine activity that many people think has long since departed. Managing Ills Love Affairs. "I can remember when I used to meddle with my brother's life,"' a busi ness woman observed as she heard the lines, "but that was before he with drew his opposition to my taking .up shorthand. Then I had nothing to do but try to find something to occupy my idle, useless brain. Now I'm so busy working that I never think of my brother except to know that he's old enough and should be worldly wise enough to look out for himself. Since he let me go to work I've allowed him. the liberty of loving that he didn't have before." It is seldom we find the woman who has been allowed to occupy herself with work of her own using her leisure in laying out love affairs for her brother or meddling with any affections that ho may have acquired on his own Initiative. That meddling is a trait born in wom en is a scientific discovery not yet proven, but certain it is that we have the word of keen students of character end psychologists who tell us that many a life is wrecked because the vic tim was not strong enough to oppose certain forces that diverted his life Into channels uncongenial to him. "She deviled me until I was too old to continue to fight for the things that in my youth I thought I wanted," are the ungallant words of a man who now lives a recluse, in speaking of his sister, a. woman older than himself. Friends who knew him in his youth tell how he adored a young girl be neath him socially. His sister opposed the match, and even went so far as toi explain her objections to the girl and to wring from her a promise that she would not humiliate the family by mar rying into it. The man mrough long years was not able to make the girl break her promise. And the sister, on the other hand, continued to meddle with the' brother's life, until at her death he made his sad confession that this woman's interference had wrecked his life and left him without even the desire for happiness that he had in his youth. And the pitiful part of it. as one of the sister's friends observed, was that' the woman herself was not happy. She was obsessed by the conviction that it was her duty to her family to save the head of J from a connection in mar riage with one of humble birth. Few meddlers are hanpy. Certainly no one of us ever saw onewith a serene spirit, and a ready acceptance that whatever is is best. - To use a vulgar expression, a woman of this type is usually spiritually and mentally hidebound. She cannot' see Plato's wisdom, "All things concur and all things serve." Fate to such a one is a myth of the far-gone ages. She herself must ap- point herself as the family "guardian angel and direct the forces of nature, or a cataclysm will result. Poor, de luded woman! There are many such, who buckle on their shoulders a burden heavier than that of Atlas, and who carry it to the end, helping no one and hindering many. As to -the Victim. The victim' of such meddlers is al ways a tragic figure, but more espe cially if he be a man. A man, some how, seems more helpless and less able to protect himself against women busy bodies than a woman. The very fact that he is one who can be victimized places him in the class with the de fenseless. He has no means for fighting such fire with fire. He is outgeneraled be fore the fight begins. The man who allows himself to be "run" by the women of. his family is always a very weak or a very strong one. More often than not he i very strong. His very strength makes him all the more an admirable victim. For the woman med dler's weapons are the weapons that a strong man scorns to break down. Innuendo, sarcasm, gossip and in trigue are unknown to him. When these are adroitly lined up against him he usually accepts silently the proof offered and goes on his way, perhaps a little more sad, a little less convinced in the goodness and fairness of the world, but withal perfectly confident that his own judgment is at fault. A woman with nothing to do can usually do anything she sets her wits to do if the matter Is a readjustment or displacement of some man's family, business .or, love affairs. , I recall a woman -who, probably inspired bjr. the most altruistic motives, lived her life, such as it was, and when she was well past middle age said to a friend: "I -have had.no life of my own. It has seemed to be necessary to sacrifice my own happiness for that of my family." Now, the friend was a truthful woman and one who did not hesitate when she felt the time had come for her to strike a needed blow. "My dear Flora," she said, "you are a sadly - deluded woman. - You . are right: you have had no life of your N '"' V 3a-Sp plained his marriage not by saying that he loved the girl very much. This was true, but he hedged and declared that he- had observed the men about him that all of them were managed by some woman. "Now I have five sisters," he said, "and they were getting together to make a. pool of my future. I decided that I'd rather be run by Mary as my wife than by those five strong willed women. There's no telling where they'd land me finally. With Mary I believe I can work out the problem of a happy life myself." We women who have brothers or men relatives or friends should give them their freedom in the fullest sense. Women have many silken threads that can bind a man strong as Samson with out the victim suspecting he is bound. The honest thing to do is to let a man arrange his own life, choose his own friends and marry the woman he loves, be she the first lady of the land or the youngest daughter of a one eyed washerwoman. It's his life. He only has the right to experiment with it. AMONG OREGON PEAKS Continued From .Page 4.) horses, mules and with the now packless capering behind, climbed the a delight to the eyes. Golden ragwart. masses of blue lupin and reddish pink steep trail that wound along the side , . . . , . , , of the Obsidian cliffs. We came soon paintbrush made a riot of colors, . , , , , , . .. in. to lovely alpine glades, bright with hemmed in on two sides by the forest, many.colored flowers and dotted with on another by the wall of lava, with iakes of melted snow and family groups its pointed trees and its base washed of everg.reen trees. On our right dim by the white stream that came with a Diue mountains marked the horizon and leaping fall into the meadow, while on on our left just out of touch, were the the remaining side, above drifts of gisters the north Sister, a grim rock snow, for a sheer 300 feet towered the peak, fearful to look on; the middle Obsidian cliffs. Sister, with gentler slopes and many Even in mountain solitudes house- 8n0wfields, and the south Sister, some keeping instincts are strong in women wat aloof, in a mantle of enow. Then who are not Mrs. Pankhursts, so while we rodo up a ions spur, the forest the guide unpacked and brought wood, &rowing sparser with every step, until we made the bed we were to sleep in. It- was scandalously late in the after . noon to be doing such a task, and we were not accustomed to shaking up we reached a region of snowfields and snow lakes and mounds of black glassy rock fragments and more and rarer alpine iiowers; me western mattress with a double-bladed ax and vemonei yellow and white paintbrush. Jack-knives; but we were proud of that and heath, with its dainty bells of white and of pink, and so upward until we were above the timber line, 8000 feet, perhaps, above sea level, on the middle Sister. From here the view was magnificent. On the north stood Mount Washington and Mount Jefferson, the precipitous peak of Squaw Mountain, Three-Fin- bough bed when It was finally chopped and whittled and smoothed into ehape, with the 20 pairs of blankets and the 30 comforts and the chenille , curtain spread over it and our four saddles at the head, underneath the down pillows. Our dinner was elaborate, beginning with fried chicken and ending with "WHEN FIVE FEMALE RELATIONS own, because you left your own life unlived to live the. .lives of every member of your family! The result is you're past middle age, . with no ties nearer than those brothers and sisters, and you've kept each of these from having? ties nearer than that. DO, START THE PERILOUS WHO HAVE NOTHING ELSE ON EAR TH TO TASK. OF MAPPING OUT A MAN'S LIFE right to be happy. . Most of us agree your back. They were only your friends that every woman has this divine birthright. ' But in our generosity t6 pineapple; but what we most enjoyed gerfcd jack, that gigantic, mutilated was the boiled potatoes; the red gods, hand pointing skyward; in the middle givers of good appetites, had seen to distance. Hand Lake, the red summit of that.. The sun went down In a blaze oiallie Mountain, and the gorge of Lost of glory beyond the wall of lava; twl- cj-ee. ' light fell, and while the straggling hemlocks were still etched black against the after-glow, the full mon came up, flooding the meadow with its pale light. Later it was pleasant lying in the All around the horizon were dim blue mountains. Near by stood the ragged crater known as the Bachelor; across a canyon towered the snow-clad Hus band, and, far to the south, we saw Diumond peak and the tip of Shasta. There was not a cloud in all the sky. night to watch the moon sail across the air was crystal clear and the wind the open space in the fir trees and to blew fresh and exhilarating in that high our own sex we must also extend the same right to man. We, must be gen erous, yes,, but Just, first of all. Most You say you have sacrificed your own women who are unhappy are unhappy life. I say you have sacrificed the lives of everybody in your family. You piness. He Is an example of a man who has let a woman take the reins of his life- into her hands when her hands because of some man, is a trite old saying. But may not the same deduc-' never really wanted happiness; you tion be applied to unhappy men? Have wanted the supreme right to dictate, you ever known a man who was truly were not strong enough to guide him. You ve got it, if anybody ever had. unhappy whose sorrow didn t go back He is, without suspecting it, a "man And I-can't see that you deserve one. to some woman? aged husband," and his wife, though bit of the sympathy you are hypocrite I know a man who at the time of his she is ostensibly charming and beauti- when you were rich." have regained their fortune, but the see the evening star gieam mruus.. wa, . a old man's faith in-his friends is gone, the boughs. head; there was no other sign of life; And he misses them. He is unhappy. There was no sound but the crackling nothing but rock and the eternal snows, yet he doesn't suspect that the one of the fire, the rush of the stream and On our way back to camp In the nearest him is the cause of his unhap- the thin sweet music of the crickets afternoon we saw the fresh tracks of scraping their violins, xne moon nan a Dear. sailed across the snowbank and- got . tangled in the trees on the other side. That night we -again watched the when the bough bed began to grow moon 6aii giowly across the sky. and the stars became entangled In the softer. Then, all at once, it was morn ing. I sat up and looked about the room, across the white-frosted carpet enough to pretend to crave.' marriage was the most spontaneous f Ul, is a meddler of the very first water. , of lupin and paintbrush, to the snow- So it would seem that the man who and whole-hearted person In the world. wasn't "strong enough to see relatives" He was very rich' and very simple and must have had some enlightenment democratic in his tastes. He married a along similar lines. When a man woman who socially was beneath him. reaches middle age, "picked at" by the She was not welcomed cordially in the women of his family, his affections in- circles that were new to her, and it terfered with, his friends ostracized rankled. Then they lost their money, because they happen not to be of the and she began her subtle undermining same birth, he Is indeed a fortunate of the man's faith in people. person if finally he is able to analyze the situation and strong enough to fight-the influences that would shut these desired things out of his life. Extending; Woman's Rights to Man. We hear a" great deal of a woman's a keen sense of ridicule, and she used it to her own ends. The Managed Husband. "You make a perfect fool of your self," she would say to her husband. "Those people make fun of you behind Women Are Bon Meddlers. The question comes near home. We women are born meddlers. ' Especially if we are idle. When we haven't any thing to do we turn about and make mischief, to fill up our spare time. The wicked part of this comes when we She Iiad PrJect our mischief-making propensity into tne lire or any man wno nas, or should have, the right to live his own life. We busy ourselves with match making for our own ends, or in break ing up matches that don't appeal to our sense of the general fitness of things. A keen witted bachelor recently ex- bank, and up at the ceiling 'of blue sky, where the sun was just touching the tree tops. Three terrifying heads branches of the- fir trees. Before sun rise I awoke and saw the morning star fade and disappear. At dawn the meadow, as on the day before, was glistening white with frost. By 7 arose from the saddles, two piratical o'clock we were in tne saddle ana awaj, ones wrapt in scarves of orange and fortified for the Journey by an ample black, and one in a lace-edged boudoir tfreakfast of many pancakes. Back over cap that sat strangely above a blue the lava we went, through the forest flannel shirt and red tie. The worst- of larch and the ancient burn, and the looking head, in a red bandana I could forest of jackpine, leaving the poetry not see, because. It was my own. Some- of the trail for the prosy wagon road, what stiffly we picked our hob-nailed . Next year, when the red gods call, boots out of the foot of the bed, vari- we are going again into the high, silent ous parts of our wardrobe from under places we four women, the guide and the pillows, and arose. Duffy, the dog. and a train to delight After breakfast we mounted our the soul of a mountaineer. WIZARDS EFA5H St fir's v y? y7- v. :- a- 4 7S 5- fW f v si'- r - ' n r " . -!. 1 i.. 3" . r SX-'WW" ' -i -' ' i & -t V -'J ? w ... BY ROBERT II. MOULTON'. WHEN a year or two ago someone ferreted out Louis Van Boeckel in a small hamlet in Belgium the art world wondered, for he had been making in an ordinary blacksmith shop, with crude tools, beautiful reproduc tions of Bowers. Today much of his fine work is in the possession of the nobility in Belgium, and he has been awarded diplomas and medals at Euro pean exhibitions. A similar case has occurred in this country. There has been discovered recently, not more than 40 minutes from the bustling, commer cial center of New York, a man whose ekill In metal floriculture has been pronounced by critics to be superior even to that of the great Van Boeckel. The American wizard of the forge is James Cran, of Plalnfield, N. J., who, not - a great while ago, was shoeing horses. All the beautiful pieces shown herewith were actually made in the blacksmith shop. The only tools used were the ordinary hammer with cross peen. tongs of various sizes, pliers and one or two other simple Implements, all of which were made by the smith him self. Art critics who have seen his work agree that the welds are cleaner and neater than those made by Van Boeckel, and that Cran has gone very much closer to nature in his work. Mr. Cran works entirely from memory, using no model. He studies his object closely, fixes' it firmly In his mind and then begins work at the forge. When he began to do this kind of work he used ordinary. chain iron; now he has adopt ed Swedish iron,whlch is more elastic and malleable. Every piece illustrated was made on an ordinary forge. It . is an . interesting sight to watch this smith make a rose. He first fash ions the core ' and then forges the smaller petals, hammering out the ends flat and then placing them over an iron block containing holes of various sizes.' By hammering them over these holes they are hollowed out until they resemble little spoons. After hollowing out the four petals he grasps the iron rosebud in a pair of tongs, thrusts it into the fire and heats the stems. He takes it. out of the fire and hammers the stems into a solid mass witlw the flat-faced hammer. He forms the larger petals In the same manner and, after having thus made the complete rose, grasps it as in the beginning- with larger tongs, heats it again and finally places it. a red-hot glowing mass, forming a beautiful representation of the genuine natural flower, in a vise. The smith then . takes a device shaped somewhat like a screw driver and opens the outermost petals first, then in a less degree the inner petals. By an artistic twist of the tweezers he gives these petals the natural look ing curl. It 4s difficult to open out the petals without breaking them off, and to learn to do this required con- siderable patience and experience on the part of the smith. - It requires about 135 minutes to make a rose such as has been de scribed. An attractive spray of leaves may be made In about half an hour. All the different parts of the flowers are forged separately, and the veins or radial ribs of the leaves are produced by means of the cross peen of the hammer. The same instrument," when slightly-tilted and when the blows are directed toward the outside of the leaf, produces the serrated edge of the leaf. The piece from which tne leaf is made is first held in the tongs by the stem, heated and flattened on the anvlL The center rib in the leaf is formed by having that part lap over the anvil's edge while the artist is flattening the leaf. A rose branch 13 inches high and made of 94 separate pieces, which re quired 13 hours to make, excites the admiration of all who see it. Mr. Cran began his apprenticeship as a blacksmith in Scotland when 18 years of age. . But horse-shoeing, re pairing plows, harrows and wagons grew monotonous after a few years, and Cran, in looking for something new in blacksmithing, had the good fortune to get employment from Mr. James Anderson, the famous maker of iron golf club heads, of Anstruther, Scotland. At this kind of work he soon became an expert and was suc cessively employed, by several of tha best known manufacturers of golf irons in Scotland. In 1896 he came to the United States and was probably the first man to make a hand-forged golf club in this country. After a few years devoted to this work, he started out to follow machine blacksmithing, and today superintends the most intricate and exact work in forging the fine products of one of the largest machine tool concerns in the country. It is in his leisure hours that he himself works at a small forge which he has fitted up in the rear of his home, molding into everlasting beauty wreaths of flowers that defy the Win ter's frost,
