Almost a Woman Part 2

"It happened this way. Mr. Roebling, who was superintending its construction, was taken ill, and his wife took his place and personally gave oversight to every part of the work until it was done. You see, her being a woman did not prevent her doing the work. But if she had been only a careless or an ignorant woman she could not have done it. It was _mind_, you see, and cultured mind at that, which was the master power.

If she had not been working with him in making the plans, she could not have worked for him in carrying them out. Instead of lamenting over your s.e.x, you would better rejoice in the fact that you are a _spirit_, and realize that your power in all spheres of activity will be measured by the cultivation of your mental and spiritual powers."

"But, father, even if I do cultivate my mind, I shall probably never have an opportunity to do such a grand thing as help to build a Brooklyn bridge."

"Probably not, but you can do a greater thing. You can fit yourself to work on finer material than insensate stones. You can mould plastic minds. It is a far greater thing to wield spiritual forces than to manipulate inorganic matter."

"But, all men do not merely make _things_. There are great statesmen, great soldiers, great writers."

"True, but you would not want to be a soldier, I am sure. To kill is not a glorious profession. And to be a great statesman or writer is not merely a question of s.e.x; it is a question of mind."

"Do you think women have as much ability as men? Aren't men really smarter than women?"

Mr. Wayne smiled at the girl's eagerness. "I do not compare men and women to decide their relative ability," he answered. "I believe their minds differ, but that does not imply that one is superior and the other inferior. Each is superior in its own place."

"But men's minds are so much stronger, father. Women never can be on the same level as men."

"Bring me two needles of different sizes from your work basket. Now, tell me, which is superior to the other."

"That depends on what you want to do with them," replied Helen. "If you were going to sew on shoe b.u.t.tons, you'd use this big one. If you wanted to hem a cambric handkerchief, you'd take this fine one."

"Just so. Each is superior in its special place, and both are necessary.

This is just as it seems to me in regard to the ability of men and women. They are both minds; one strong, robust, enduring rough usage; the other fine, delicate, going where the first cannot go, and therefore supplementing it, and increasing the range of work that can be accomplished. The fine needle might complain that it could not do hard work, but do you think the complaint would be justifiable?"

"Why, no, I don't; but tell me what great things a woman can do--things that are worth while, I mean; something besides keep house and take care of children. It seems to me that merely to be a cook and nurse girl is not a very high calling."

"She might be a chemist," suggested Mr. Wayne.

"Oh, yes, a few women might; but I mean something that I could be, or other girls like me who have no special talent."

"There is a great need of scientific knowledge among women. Every housekeeper needs to know something of chemistry. The woman who knows the chemical action of acids and alkalies on each other will never use soda with sweet milk, nor make the mistake of using an excess of soda with sour milk. And every day, in a myriad of ways, her knowledge of chemistry will be called into use."

"Then every woman should be a psychologist, most especially if she is to have the care of children."

"O, father, you use such big words. Tell me just what you mean."

"I mean that the office of nurse or mother demands the highest study of mental evolution. More big words, but I'll try to make you understand.

"It seems to you that any one can take care of a baby. But what is a baby? Not just a helpless little animal, to be fed and clothed and kept warm. A baby is a spirit in the process of development. From the moment of birth it is being educated by everything around it; the very tones of voice used in speaking to it are educating it. It is a great thing to be President of the United States, but that president was once a baby. His life depended on the way he was fed and cared for; his character was largely created by the circ.u.mstances of his life; and his mental powers--which he inherited from both parents--were in his babyhood and early childhood largely under the training of some woman. That woman, whether mother or nurse, had the first chance to develop him, to make him worthy or unworthy. John Quincy Adams said, 'All I am I owe to my mother,' and that is the testimony of many of earth's greatest men.

Garfield's first kiss after his inauguration was very justly given to his mother.

"G.o.d has entrusted mothers with life's grandest work, the moulding of humanity in its plastic stage. You have done clay modelling in school, and you know that when the clay is fresh and moist you can make of it almost anything you will, but when it has hardened it is past remodelling. It is just the same with humanity. In babyhood the mind is plastic; when one has grown to maturity, it is hard and unyielding. Man makes _things_; woman makes _men_. Which is the greater work?"

Helen hesitated. "It seems very n.o.ble as you talk of it, to train a child; but you know people don't feel that way. Mothers cuddle their babies, to be sure, but men think caring for babies is beneath them.

They sneer at it as woman's work."

"Not all men, dear. Some of the great men of the world have spent years in the study of infancy, realizing that to know how the baby develops will enable them to understand better how to train it, and rightly to train babies is in reality to make the nation."

Helen, leaning her head back on her father's shoulder, was silent for a while, then she kissed him softly, saying, "Thank you, father dear. It has been a beautiful talk together. I am sure it will help me to be a better woman."

CHAPTER II.

"Well, daughter," said Mr. Wayne, as Helen and he were sitting by the fire one Sabbath afternoon while Mrs. Wayne had gone to her room to rest.

"Why,--" said Helen hesitatingly, "there is something I have been thinking about, but I'm afraid you'll think it silly to ask you about it. You'll think I ought to be able to decide it for myself."

"Nothing that is of enough importance to be a problem to my daughter is silly to me. State your difficulty, and we'll see if we cannot clear it away."

"Well, father, I'd like to know what you think about boys and girls writing to each other. Of course, I don't mean the foolish notes they send back and forth in school. I know that is silly, but I mean correspond. You see, Paul Winslow and Robert Bates are going to move away and they're asking the girls to correspond with them, and the girls all say it will be great fun; but I don't know. You know, mother has taught me that things that seem funny at one time don't seem so at another, and I've been wondering if this is one of those things. When Robert asked me if I'd write to him I said I'd ask mother, and he seemed to get mad. He said if it was such a dangerous thing to correspond with him that I had to ask my mother, he guessed I'd better not write to him.

I said I asked my mother about everything. And he said 'I suppose you show her your letters,' and I said 'Of course,' and then he said he'd excuse me from writing to him. The girls all said I was very foolish; that it was perfectly right to correspond with boys you knew, and that our mothers wouldn't want to be bothered to read all the letters we received. But I know mother doesn't think it a bother, and I wouldn't enjoy my letters if I didn't share them with her."

"You are certainly much safer to keep in confidence with your mother,"

said Mr. Wayne, "and I should say that a young man who didn't want you to show his letters to your mother is one you wouldn't want to correspond with. I should be afraid that he'd be one who would show your letters to his boy friends and perhaps make fun of them."

"O, father! Do you think that? It seems to me that wouldn't be honorable."

"Boys do not always have the highest ideals of honor, my dear. I remember once, when I was young, I was camping with a lot of young fellows. I think all of them were corresponding with girls, and these letters were common property. They were read aloud as we gathered around the camp fire in the evening; their bad spelling was laughed at and their silly sentimentalities talked of in ways that I am sure would have made the girls' cheeks burn with shame. They thought, of course, that the boy they wrote to would keep their letters as sweet secrets. I learned a good deal that summer about girls whom I had never seen. Some of them I came to know afterwards, and I often wondered what they would say if I should quote from their letters some foolish sentimentality which they imagined no one knew about except the one to whom it was written."

"Then, father, you'd say we ought never to correspond with boys?"

"No, I didn't quite say that. I can see that a friendly correspondence might be helpful. It seems to me that girls and boys can be a great help and inspiration to each other. I once had a girl correspondent who wrote most charming letters, simple recitals of her daily life with some of her little moralizings thrown in. Perhaps I would smile at them now, but they surely helped me to have higher ideals and made me have a great reverence for womanhood. There was one thing about her letters that I thought strange then, but I now think it very wise. She always signed every letter with her full name, never with her home pet name. I have often thought of it, and I believe it is a good plan. Certainly, if you knew that you would sign your full name to every letter, you would not be as apt to write foolishly as if your ident.i.ty would be hidden under some nickname. And you never know what will become of your letters. A few days ago I read in the newspaper some foolish letters written by a girl to a man. She never imagined that any one else would read them. Yet here they were, in print, and the whole country was commenting on them.

They were all signed by some soubriquet such as 'Your darlingest Babe,'

or 'Little Jimmy,' and under the s.h.i.+eld of such a signature she no doubt felt safe. But a dark tragedy tore away the flimsy protection and every one saw all her foolishness and sin."

Helen shuddered. "I believe I'll make it a rule," she said, soberly, "to write only such things in my letters that I'd be willing to have printed over my own name."

"That's a good resolution, and I hope you'll keep it. You can feel quite certain that if you don't want to sign your own name to your letter you'd better not write it.

"There are a number of suggestions I would like to make to you along the line of your a.s.sociation with young men," said Mr. Wayne, after a pause.

"You have had no experience as yet, but in a few years you will be a woman and maybe then you'll have no father or mother to give you counsel. As you know, I don't want to shut you away from the society of young men, but I want you to know how to make it of the greatest advantage to you and to them.

"Do you know, dear, that women and girls always make the moral standards which maintain in the society of which they form a part?"

Helen shook her head doubtfully. "I don't see how that can be," she said, "for everybody says that women are better than men; and I am sure boys do lots of things that we girls would never think of doing."

"Very true," replied Mr. Wayne, "but that is because the men and boys set higher standards for the women and girls than they in turn set for the men and boys. No boy would be seen in the street with a girl who was smoking a cigar; yet girls, good girls too, let boys smoke in their company. No matter how immoral a man may be, he always demands that the women who belong to him, his wife, mother, sister or sweetheart, shall be pure and above reproach. He will even claim that a wife's misconduct sullies his honor; but she never claims that his immorality is her responsibility. She will even marry a man whom she knows to be dissipated, foolishly trusting that her love will reform him. A broken heart and degenerate children too often prove how seriously she has failed. Yes, dear, I am right in saying that women are to blame that men do not have higher ideals and live up to them. Ruskin says, 'The soul's armor is never well set to a heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails.'"

"It's putting a great responsibility on women, isn't it?" sighed Helen.

"Yes, daughter, but no greater than is placed on man. Each s.e.x should be the protector and inspirer of the other. But instead of that, they often tempt and mislead each other."

"Good girls don't tempt boys, father."

"I'm afraid that they do, dear. They may not be aware of what they are doing, but nevertheless they may be sources of temptation."

"I really don't see how."