The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972, September 03, 1911, Page 56, Image 56

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    TT TT
JIM
j ; p tvt;
T0 yOI n by your hat or your
M J heart, girlf Answer. z '
T You are America's pride and
joy, its fairest flower, its guerdon of happi
Hess, its ambition and its dear reward. You
tare over power in gly clever; every one admits,
that. You are adorably beautiful; the
.. acclamation of the world is a daily, speaking
testimony.
But you are false as fair; hard as the
polished jewels that adorn your scintillant
beauty; hollow as the pearls you love to
tutor. Of allthe women in the world, you
org the Lady of the Ash, whose empty
charms cheated the ardent hero of "Phan
tasies." That heart of yours is as little as
that hat of yours is huge; and he who, makes
the mistake of loving you courts pain and
disaster.
At this point, please pause in your right
eous indignation and accept the apologies of
all American citizens, who didn t so much
as' think these dreadful libels and heard
them from stranger lips with horror equal to
your own.
f You aretCt any of those things, are yout
i fYou are what we have always thought you,
whether it was in the blissful shadow of the
seaside porch or on the platform in your
'graduation gown. ,
kve know it ourselves, of course; but
when some one who is supposed to he
accustomed to observe, and with an inter
national reputation, comes ajong and inso
lently announces such disheartening discov
eries about you, every one of your sincere
admirers feels thatt those who know you so
(i ruin tu yuur uccnjc. ,
And trs lucky for the fellow who
libeled you that he got away before one of
"the dozens of American women, who could
'dissect him with his own scalpel, had time
tt'p undertake the duty.
TT HERE trs plenty of women In other countrlea
wno couia oe content wiin ine lime compliments
li'fc M that went with the cruel verdict
f tin As E. PhiUlDB ODpenhelm, the English novel-
; 1st, was making ready for his homeward voyage, after a.
tbrM six weeks In the United States, he furnished the
cfurprlae of British tourist Interviews:
' He admitted that American girls are beautiful; that
ijUiey are clever; but, after studying them in Newport,
LJNw York, Boston and various other habitats supposed
: to be most favorable to the development of their species.
0tkC could only claoalfy them as a combination of hats.
beauty, self-concentration and cocktails that was alto
gether too much for hlro.
Clever though thpv were thev hail no real Intellect.
nality whatever; lovely as they were, they had no hearts
to love with; all they wanted was a hat buyer, to keep
v tlwn supplied with the amazing creations that adorn
their empty little heads, containing an insatiable vacuum
bordered with quotation marks. Compared With the
Tfntle, sentimental English girl, they were composed of
Nfcarborundum; compared with the Ignorant French girl,
'their lnnulaltlveneaa mlktl them a amir tn a man'a mnl
a vubv tuny Keeps nun on me jump, Bui uiey are, alter
f- dwu ii ii uwnc. b 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 v in 1 1 1 1 it 1 1 l nnunw anama
!rowned with the gorgeous hats which are the sols
' cbjects of their craving and adoration.
"J '. Mr. Oppenheim s diatribe made a great hit. If the
.measure of greatness In a hk can be gauged from the
taln it lnjjlcta on hoBtespea who have been kind to a
'truest It was almost as great a hit, being almost as
; totigriteful, as Kipling's letters were about the United
ittates, after everybody had wined and dined him, from
tn Pacific to the Atlantic. But, then, Oppenhelm Isn't
jmosqulto la slap it.
Josephine Dodge Daskatn, who knows the American
I kT so well that people can't get enough of her stories
pn that antranctng topic, might have given Mr. Oppen
; helm bis needed rap if she hadn't been too busy as the
affectionate wife of Selden Bacon, a Wall street lawyer,
making home happy and, when ihe can spare time.
Writing clever verses and delightful novels that leave
!Mr. Oppenhelm's character studies looking; like a train
. ef freight cars in a, ditch, with a runaway locomotive
cfor the plot. . '
-p Mrs. Edith Wharton, who wrote her famous "House
fit Mirth" ten years after her marriage to Edward Whar
ton, of Boa ton, might have consented to an Introduction
to Mr. Oppenhelm as a friendless and Ignorant stranger;
Yut the i woman whose studies of her sex here and '
abroad Include "The Greater Inclination" and "Madam
de Trtymes" could scarcely have regarded him as ah
eaual either-In knowledge of social conditions .or In
comprehension of what real women are.
And supraee Mary E. Wilkin. Freeman, wife of Dr.
. Charlee M. Freeman and acknowledged authority on the
American girl, had chosen to comment on the Oppen
helm Judgment; or If Mrs. Alice Uegan Rice, wife of
L'ale Young Bice, in her delightful home In 8t James
eeurt. In Louisville, Ky.. had honored him with some of
the humor of "Mrs., Wlgge of the Cabbage Patch"; or
If Mrs. Josephine Preston Peaboi, who fs the wife of
lionet Simeon Marks and the author of delightful verse
THE OREGON SUNDAY
, 1 Clever Women Defeat NoVelist
2 contention
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Opper?bt'
Mitt v.:-;:-.. ; :::.': ;w-.v:-v. ..:..(
and drama, had told him of the girls she knew when she
was Instructor in English literature at Wellesley per
haps Mr. Oppenhelm might have suspected that the
typical American girl of nice breeding didn't make a
practice of flinging her rounded arms about the neck of
any stray, baldheaded little British novelist who hap
pened to earn enough money with his thrillers to afford
a six weeks' vacation in the United States.
Dr. Carl Kelsey, professor of sociology In the Whar
ton School of the University of Pennsylvania, when he
saw how cruelly Novelist Oppenhelm had rasped the
sensibilities of our girls, remarked:
"I remember reading, as a boy, the. story of the Eng
lishman in the land of Hans Brlnker. One of the skaters
on the canal brought out a sandwich of fearful compila
tion and solemnly assimilated It. The Englishman has
tened to haul out his notebook and make an entry that
when the Dutch went skating they always ate extraordi
nary sandwlchea. That's the way .the average comment
on a people Is made.
THE ELUSIVE "ORDINARY"
"It Isn't the extraordinary, but the ordinary thing,
that is most significant, and the ordinary thing is juat
what travelers aren't looking for. The average American
in Paris has an eye open only for the gayety and the
dissipation, so he gets the Impression that the French
are totally different from the people he knows at home.
He doesn't realise that the average Frenchman lives the
normal home life of the person who Is very absorbingly
occupied with the business of earning a living.
"The English novelist who comes to America travels
around for a few weeks at fashionable resorts, and per
suades himself he Is 'keeping his eyes open.' His per
spectives may.be limited to a crowd of nouveaux riches
on the one side and the throngs of poor but strikingly
dressed working girls on the other. In the United States
the difference is not so easily detected between the glrla
who have plenty of money and those who work for a
living and dress as finely as they can during their
vacations.
11 Women tot Work
WOMAN, whether she likes it or not, u
fafed to work.
Olive Schreiner says so, after
studying her sex and her subject for
half her lifetime and she is old enough now to
haVe a daughter who is a woman grown.
If the members of her half of humanity don't
work, or won't work, or can't work, then obr very
civilization is doomed to shameful failure. Woman
must work for her own salvation; and man
must let her work, unless he is willing to have her
ruin his.
That is the moral of her new book, "Woman
and Labor," about which clings the terrible
romance of war; for it is, in itself, as sad an inci
dent in a writer's life as any that have been told
of famous authors in the past.
FOR any writer, woman ornan, the books are, In
very truth, children of the brain, loved and
cherished as tenderly, as carefully, as real
children can be. When Olive Schreiner was
first- moved to write, she began to prepare chapters
on the position of her sex In (this, fearfully difficult
and complex world. She did It like a scientist, with
thorough studies of the relations of sex in the very
lowest orders of animate life. A monumental work.
In two great volumes, had been finished In the manu
script when the Boer war broke out.
WORK OF YEARS LOST
The author was forced to leave her charming home
In the Transvaal. In her absence her house was looted,
her desk was broken open and the manuscript of
the book, on which she had spent' the better part of
her life, was chucked In the middle of the floor and
set on Are. Only some fragments of that Immense and
loving labor remained. She had not the heart to at
tack the task again. She took the material that was
left, arranged It, added to It, and gave It to the public
for what It was.
The vandal who touched the match to those pages
made war not merely on one weak, absent woman,
but upon every one of her sex. Including the very
mother that bore him. It was one of those- unspeak
able crimes for which the whole human species pays
the penalty.
But the thought of the lost great work need' not
swallow up the wealth of material that was left as
JOURNAL. JfOKTLAND, SUNDAY MORNING. SEPTEMBER 3, . 1811
mat Mmencans Live
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evidence of Its greatness. One can only wonder wnat
astounding, what convincing chapters were destroyed,
when he reads the Impressive arguments that re
main. . ---rij -, , ' ' .
She sketches those'sclentlflc analogies that prove,
from the life of the lower animals, that the female -has
always had her work to do. In addition to the
bearing1 of the young, and that, in many species, she
Is fitted by nature to dispense altogetuer with the
male as defender and provider, bhe reviews savage
existence, where' woman bears the children and per
forms all the drudgerv. She reviews the highest so
ciety,. where women will neither turn a hartd to honest
labor nor fulfill their Uoa-given . function of being '
mothers to their kind. And . her conclusion Is unes
capable: "Finely , clad, tenderly housed,- life became for;
woman merely the gratification of her own physical
and . sexual appetites, and the appetites of Aha male,
through the stimulation of which she could maintain
herself. And, whether aa kept wife or kept mistress.
mil J a-4
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Oppenheims
for Jrpcc
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Josephine.
Tlrastort
Soft
Lifenrry
"In either case, his observations may be pert or Im
pertinent; but they will scarcely be convincing to the
sensible, well-informed citizen. The truth Is that the
observations of most men on women are wholly
superficial.
"Our critical Mr. Oppenhelm may be Joking trying
to make a sensation. If he was endeavoring to get a
few deep-seated convictions out of his eystem, he has
merely stamped himself as a superficial observer. If he
waa having a little fun at our expense, we can afford to
laugh and retort In kind.
"I presume that the people of any nation see more of
the serious side of their own existence than does the
transient visitor who goes abroad for a good time. Here,
people who play hardest often work hardest. What
possibility of seeing thai, real, that serious aide of our
American life came to him? . One can scarcely Judge the
true, the serious reality of our American life from the
ordinary gayety of the crowds he encounters at the sea
shore on a Saturday and Bunday. There la in our exist
ence an Intensity which may-or may not be wlao. but Is
certainty different from the more leisurely methods of
Europe. We work while we work and p)ay while we
'iPlay, And our American girls are keen enough In their
efforts to help foreign visitors enjoy "themselves.
"It's quite possible," continued, professor Kelsey,
with a grin that matched Mr. Oppenheim s own while
the novelist waa scoring the girls who hadn't proved
willing to spoon with him, "that our visitor's observa
tion of feminine American hearts may have been based
ion hie Impression that American girls consider European
visitors as purely business propositions. The average
American man has never noticed any lack of sentiment
on their part.
"As for- the intellectual capacity of our girls, my own
observations have satisfied me that they are the equals
of the men in all fields of learning where they meet
for rivalry.
NOT AN INFERIOR
"The old opinion that woman was to be regarded as
man's Inferior Is a philosophy now discarded among the
people who are best informed In thatartlcular subject.
One of the reasons so many college boys dislike coedu
cation is that they do not like to be compelled to prove
the mental superiority which la their boast. I hsve fre
quently heard students criticise the Phi Beta Kappa
organizations . because too many women were admitted
to membership; yet that Is an honor which is to be fairly
won in scholaetic competition. The girl's Interest may
be more concentrated In her college studies, but the fact
is not to be gainsaid that she does work quite as good
as that of the boys.
"But there really isn't any necessity for treating Mr.
Oppenheim'acomments seriously," concluded Professor
Kelsey. "An opera like 'The Girl of the Oolden West'
may be beautiful from the artlstlo and musical stand
, She S oyJt
she contributed nothing to the active and sustaining
labors of her society. She' had attained to the full
development of that type which, vohether in modern
Paris or New York or London, or In ancient Greece,
Assyria or Home, Is essentially one In its features,
its nature and its results. She was the 'fine lady
the human female parasite the most deadly microbe
which can make its appearance on the surface of any
social organism. Wherever n the history of the
past, this type has reached its full development and
has comprised,, the; bulk of the females belonging to
any dominant class or race, It has heralded Its decay,"
As for woman's primitive function of child-bearing,
Olive Schreiner declares the problem of race
suicide Is simply the outcome of economic conditions
which make the production of many children need
less, perhaps harmful She goes4 so far aa to declare:
"It is certain that the time' is now rapidly ap
proaching when' child-bearing will be regarded as a
lofty privilege, permissible only to those who have
shown their power rightly to train and provide for
their offspring, rather than a labor which In Itself, and
under whatever conditions performed, is beneficial
to society."
All the old occupations for women, she perceives,
have been swept away by .man's invention, and has
enormously enhanced powers of .co-operation. Even
, the minor domestic- operations are tending to pass
out of the circle of woman's labor. The 'very carpets
are beaten, the windows cleaned, the floors polished,
by machines or bv extra- and often male labor. . .
Vast armies of women exist In the big cities,
and In the country, too, who are doomed not only to
race-suicide, but to the deprivation of marriage alto
gether; other vast armies are doomed to relation
ships that are not sanctioned by wedlock. The whole
time is out of joint unless the sex, robbed on the one
hand of Its function of motherhood and on the other
of Its offices of housekeeping, be given some occupa
tions which shall protect It from- the deadly sin of
parasitism. And she formulates the demands of her
sexs , '
"We, demand. In that strange new World that I
arising alike upon the. man snd the woman?. 'where
nothing is; as It was, and all things are assuming
new shapes and relations, that In this new world
we also shall have our share of honored and socially
useful human jol. cur tull half of the labor of the
' children of women. We demand nothing mars than
this, and we will take nothing less.
-Thla," she adds. " is our Woman's Right" t
point; but, as a real portrayal of America. It ranks mora
as a caricature than as- a photograph. Mark Twain's
- stories of American life are much mere valued in Europe
than his discussions of European life. Observations of
other peoples, based on short acquaintance, may be tre
mendously keen and witty; they may point out some
phases which those who live the life may not have
noticed; but they are all likely to rest on fallacy. The
real point Is that human nature is essentially one the
world over, and different types of men and women are
simply living expressions of different conditions of
. existence."
Fighting the New Modes of ,
Warfare
SINCE the new types of air craft have made their
appearance and the world has been depicting
i:?tv methods of warfare, the inventors have
been busily engaged In trying to produce sonte device
that would counteract all of the new Ideas of aerial
attacks on the naval or land forces of any country.
The Krupps of Germany have been the means of
placing various typVs of very destructive Implements
of war before the world; but their newest device Is
an aerial torpedo which promises to make aerial at
tacks very hazardous, if not Impossible.
It is a self-propelling contrivance that Is so con
structed that It consists of two distinct, parts, one
in which the slow powder Is contained and the other
containing the high explosive, bomb, with a very
sensitive percussion, which will not be reloased for
action until the projectile Is at full speed. The re
leasing of the percUsslon will enable the aeronaut to
start the projectile without danger to himself or bis
air craft, and a certain speed will unlock the delicate
perousslon, which will be exploded if it strikes as
much, as a soft gasbag in the air.
The explosive bomb Is so powerful It will destroy
snytblng near it, and there is absoluts certainty that
any airship will not be able to escape.
The projectile can be thrown from the land aa
well as from an airship, and the device is so de
signed that aim Is certain from any angle, and the
distance can be Increased or diminished, making It
one of the most formidable projectiles yet invented.
The propelling device is arranged in a system of
tubes, and is started by either an explosive of a minor
character or electricity. v
The device is of Swedish origin, and patents are
being taken out in several of the leading countries,
among which Is the United States.
With such an implement of modern warfare It
may be -useless for people to attempt aerial attacks.
Smart Work of the Woodpecker
MANY birds show very great intelligence, but the
wisdom of the woodpecker is certainly well
worth a little careful study.
Some persons are ' of the opinion that reason is
no 'more than keen Instinct; but there Is a difference
when we come to study some of the habits of a few
of the more Intelligent birds. "
The woodpeckers that inhabit some of the western
wooded districts, and especially In sections of Cali
fornia, show a wonderful reasoning power.
They actually plan for montha ahead .for what
they consider a very delicate morsel of food. They
provide certain food for a season when that par
ticular kind la very scarce, and they make the work
v& Hvuimi ii vjuiiv easy, iuu.
While acorns are falling In the autumn months
the woodpeckers climb all over the trunks of trees
WVR HUUUI,.,, ii,a.ii 11V1C0 iu HID 1TUUU. 414"
carry acorns to these cavities and in some manner
pound or push them Into the holes they have made,
with the point of the acorn in the hole, leaving ex
posed the larger end of the acorn.
Months after, when winter has passed and ths
spring has come, these woodpeckers return to the
scene of their autumn labors, and there in each acorn
they find a nice plump worm feeding on the kernel of
the acorns they had placed In the holes in the trees,
.'ine birds flit from one acorn to another, peck open
the shell and extract the delicious morsel of food.
The birds evidently knew the worms would be there.
Men who have watched the work of these birds
while placing the acorns in the holes thoy made In
the trunks of trees declare the birds will carefully
examine an acorn, and if It is found to be one that
.uses worm life In the months to follow It Is car
ried to the cavities and deposited; but If the acorn is
a perfectly sound one the birds will discard It and
pick up another.
Most acorns.llke chestnuts, are polluted with a
r or ni In the earner Htaeres of the nut's life, and this
germ hatches out a worm In the very flesh of the
nut and the meat Is food for the worm.
It is very evident the smart woodpeckers know
all this, and much more, and they simply reason that
It would be wise to secure a plentiful supply; and
this Is the reason thv are flo busy pecking the trees
full of holes. Each hole will hold an acorn and each
acorn will cortslr) k worm.
Tt is ald the food supply of these birds would be
quite scarce at the spring season If they did not
resort to this method of storing away a good supply
of ment for thst season.
u
Old Mother Cray," the Fortune
Maker
THE! sailor Is often a superstitious person, and la
most of the riverside districts along the Thames,
where he lodges, the woman fortune-teller does a
big business. Some of these women have weird reputa
tions In the .matter of belngt able to foretell fortune or
disaster on a voyage. , They also frequently give tht
consulter advice In their love affairs. '
One of these fortune-tellers, a woman named Crty,'
who died a few years back, was noted for her marvelous
powers of seeing the future. Che did a large business in
selling charms which would enable the wearer to esaape
the terrible disasters that ware otherwise In store for
him. Her knowledge of the past, too, was wonderful.
all6rs who flocked, to her went Informed where they
had come from and what their last voyage had been like.
Kor some days "Mother Cray" was seen by no one and
the door Of the filthy hovel in which she lived remained
closed. At last the place, was broken Into. Stretched
upon the floor of the front room, the searchers earns
On the body of the 'old woman., She had been dead soma
dsys. "Old Mother Cray" turned out to be. a man in
disguise. Concealed under loose bounds and in nooks and
corners of the filthy room were found gold, notes ana
jewels Worth several hundred pounds. , Who "Old Mother
V Cray" 'wag was nevtr 'discovered.. . .. . i,, . .
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