Page:Oread August-July 1895.djvu/7

Rh One man has found a living ideal, "twenty-two years ago I met her," he said. She was good-looking, not handsome, with a voice soothing and yet inspiring in its very tenderness. She was reserved, discreet, and fully capable of governing herself under all circumstances. Her mind was alert and bright, above all cruel jests, and fully appreciative of her home duties. She has cheerfully and willingly shared adversity and accepted prosperity. Her heart was always pure and free from selfishness, her love has been most loyal, her friendship unswerving. My ideal, perhaps is high, but she is a loving reality, and though the inevitable has changed her dark hair to beautiful silver gray, her other charming attributes remain and she is still my ideal, my wife!

The ideal of the new woman is a composite portrait which embodies the ideal of the rose, the aesthetic soul, the physical courage, the fearless sovereign, the symbol of happiness, the fireside queen, the home angel, the living flesh and blood companion.

Her ideal is not one who abnormally develops only one of the trinity of mind, heart and body. Not that one who dwells in the highest empyrean of intellect, who pities you that you have not read Ibsen and Dante and Browning, who laments lest you may never attain her lofty plane.

Not that one who is a devotee to charity and benevolence, who founds hospitals for four-footed animals and feathered bipeds, but has no leisure for children, nor kind words for those in the humbler walks of life, not that one who is an extremist in physical development, who drapes herself in garments fearfully and wonderfully made, who bends and gyrates through 600 distinct exercises, invented for the development of 600 different muscles of the body. But she is the symmetrical woman who fearlessly and intelligently decides upon what she can best do, and does it, performing such duties becomingly and well, and enjoying the life which opens before her. She asserts no legal claim to a place for which she knows she has no equitable title. She transforms minute irritating duties of every-day life, into gems for her own coronet, even as the oyster converts grains of sand to shining pearls. She sees before her a large and beautiful career of trying to make it harder for peo-ple to do wrong and easier for them to do right. She is prepared to take her place in society wherever her influence can help brighten the lives of those around her. She has an excellent recipe for happiness, to cultivate hopeful, cheerful spirits and enjoy things as they are.

Her idea of power is not a landscape illumined with gay uniforms of a vast standing army, but the wealth and power she covets is in the light from myriad happy homes all over the land. The real new woman, is not the creation of newspaper paragraphs and caricaturists, the embodiment of fads and foibles, but is so much like the sensible wives, mothers and daughters of the homes we have known and honored all our lives; that she is not always recognized because she preserves her womanhood. There is no radical change in her nature and never can be, by an awakened interest in the real things of the world, the problems as well as the beauties, she makes herself more indispensable, more reliable, more powerful. She brings her case before the tribunal of the public for adjudication. It is an action entitled, Sense vs. Folly--Reason vs. Prejudice—-Dolls vs. Brains.

Open wide every door of opportunity and development. And the woman who chooses the duties of wife and mother, the home maker, let her not demean her calling, and her sisters in other avocations, let them not like Niobe of old, enjoying the divinity of her life, deride with jingles of "pots and pans, cradles and tubs, butchers and bakers, maids and dress-makers," lest the punishment of Niobe fall on them.

Leaving to women the perfect freedom of choice and development in the sphere of duty will not result in domestic desolation.

So long as man is man, and woman woman, the old, old story will never go out of print. The throne of the fireside queen will not be vacant, and baby will be king. Romeos and Juliets will never die, the wife will be the loving and beloved companion, faithful unto death. And motherhood will ever be Cornelia and her Jewels.

The twentieth century with its cleaner purposes, its higher endeavor, its limitless opportunities welcomes the real new woman.

 

The Purifying Influence of Poetry.
"Books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good; Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow." They contain food for every mind and heart--"the bread of intellectual life." In them, may be found—-beside history, philosophy and works of fiction—-poetry, which is the highest of all literary forms. It is thought clothed in beautiful words, the over-flow of a feeling heart that cannot be silent.

The poet, soaring on pinions to heights unknown to us, by the beauty and charm of his verse carries us away with him out of ourselves, causing a thrill of appreciation to pass through us, and seeing and feeling as we had never done before, we respond with earnestness and enthusiasm. When reading a poem, we are enthralled by the magic words of the bard, who lifts us into whatever realm he will, filling the soul with burning desires and aspirations. The cold heart is warmed; the base man feels he can be noble; the despairing one grows hopeful; the sleeping soul awakes to action; aroused within the human breast is every passion ever known to man.

The merry, jingling metre of the lyric fascinates and pleases. It soothes and calms the wearied brain; it falls upon the ear like the gentle ripple of murmuring waters. The soul is pervaded by an atmosphere of innocence, purity and simplicity, so that for the time, all that is sordid and low is driven into oblivion, making life seem bright and full of cheer.

Thoughtfully read your Browning, your Emerson, your Shakespeare! "What power in language" you are led to exclaim. There is something in the 