Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/41

Rh come from an old fellow who has been three times married—and deceived and made foolish by three women in turn. He says:—

Woman is a magnificent, delicate instrument on which each can play all that he can and will. Of course, put some Beethoven at the piano, and he will find you a wonderful sonata; but put some giftless strummer there, and he rattles out a vulgar polka. We are just such giftless fools, and swear at the instrument because it produces no music. No, friends, you are wrong; woman is sensitive, hospitable, tender, poetic. God gave us woman as an adornment of our lives; we ourselves have spoiled her and complain.

The play Jealousy is a sort of public trial of woman, and when at the end the crazy husband of the woman who flirted but loved him best strangles her, it is a sort of verdict, sentence, and execution in one.

How serious the trial is may be judged from the fact that each of the audience is given a pencil and a piece of paper and asked to record his opinion as to whether the man was justified in committing the murder.

How repulsive the whole thing! A play that should put "Woman" adequately on the stage needs many women and the various kinds of men who need from women the things that women can give—faith, love, children. For setting or for evidence it needs the world. The powers of life