Leading Articles in the Ri:\tews. 



591 



"WHAT DO THE GIRLS MARRY US FOR?" 

 " Problems of a Voung Husband " is the title of a 

 series of entertaining papers in Harper's by Mr. E. S. 

 Martin. In the November number he confesses :— 

 I love the tranquillity of the married state. You .nrcn'l always 

 oking out for somctliing vital to happen. It has happened. 

 Kcilly, it's an exlrai)rdinary condition. It never woulil work 

 if men weren't men and women women. I am amazed at the 

 talent women have for living with men, as exemplified by 

 Cordelia's gift for living with me. There she is, grown up, 

 intelligent, a product of indulgence, trained to fairly large 

 expectations and to as much litoty of action as her parents 

 could contrive for her ; and here I am, used to a slill larger 

 allowance of liberty, and with expectations that do not, of 

 course, match hers in all particulars ; and vet we make a go 

 -f it. 



What do the girls marry us for, anyhow ? No doubt it is 

 L-cause there is nothing better in sight for them to marry. We 

 arc indispcn.sable ; that's our best claim. And they are indis- 

 pensable ; and possibly that's theirs. Very sound claims 

 both of them, and arr.inged for us some years back — 

 300,000,000 years, I read in last week's paper, but that's not 

 important. 



Another passage may also be quoted :— 

 Cordelia and I are fairly pious people. We are eveii so old- 

 fashioned that we like to go to church. It is not a universally 

 popular pastime among the Protestants of our acquaintance, but. 

 for my part, I have to go, if it's only to be reminded that there 

 is another force always working to make life possible and 

 •palatable besides the wisdom of majorities (aforesaid), and the 

 abilities of legislatures to legislate, and the powers of courts to 

 keep them from overdoing it. Those things— the majorities and 

 ihe legislatures and the courts — are eddies in the great current. 

 I feel, when I am in church, more as though I was in the great 

 ]rrent itself. I like to go; it is such a lieauliful chance to 

 ihink. 



To this may be added an apothegm from the 

 editor's easy-chair : " Love in women exalts itself 

 through their perpetual self sacrifice in marriage, and 

 in men it debases itself through their constant self- 

 assertion." 



A WOMAN INVEIGHING AGAINST FASHION. 



" DkKss and the Woman " is the title of a pajjer in 

 lie November Atlantic Monthly, by Katherine Fuller- 

 ton Clerould. Its significance lies in that it is a 

 woman's blast against the horrible regimen of fashion. 

 ■•she says: — 



Thi- most danrining thing about fashions is that they make 

 .i viiably, nine years out often, for the greatest ugliness of the 

 I catcst number. Can anything be more absurd than to impose 

 •ingle style on the fat and the thin, on the minimum wage ami 

 i.i: maximum income ? 



I admit that no fashion has ever been created expressly for 



I'lc lean purse or for the fat woman : the dressmaker's ideal is 



imdoubte<lly the thin millionairess. Hut the fat woman and the 



ban purse must make the licst of each style, in turn, as it comes 



nlong. Since we must all dress, why not invent dresses that arc 



videly adaptable— to different materials, to diflerent occasions, 



different human types? It would purge our streets of many 



sorry and sordid spectacle, and in that sense would be an 



-thetic service botli p.irlicular and public. 



.\nd th.it i- another sin .Tgainst beauty, for it deprives a woman 



f the privilege of dressing as best becomes her. 'llierc is 



• .mething peculiarly bitter in watching the superse<ling of a 



n'Klc that wholly suils one. Now and then a wom.an confides 



■ • me her intention of keeping to some style that is especially 



a.lapled to her. " It suits me, and I am going to stick to it," 

 she declares. 



She sticks to it for, say, a year. ■' I never knew a 

 woman to try such an experiment longer." " The 

 consistent costume is like the nun's habit, the best 

 possible proof of having renounced the world " : — 



Our greatest danger is simply the loss of all standards of 

 beauty in dress. " Why do all the women walk like ducks this 

 year ?" was the question put to a friend of mine, years since, 

 by a younger brother. He did not know that a quite new kind 

 of corset h.id suddenly, during the summer months, '-come in." 

 To wear it meant change of gait and posture, eventually actual 

 change of shape. Where is the woman who could ingenuously 

 report : " She had on a lovely frock made in the style of year 

 K-fore last"? I could not do it myself; nor, I fancy, could 

 you. 



The writer further disparages the woman who, by her 

 dress, advertises her husband's riches. " .She makes 

 no indiscreet disclosures of fact, but she rustles with 

 pecuniary implications." The writer thus concludes 

 her frank diatribe : — 



But the fact that cluefly gives one pause is this : that a 

 woman c.innot mingle comforUibly with her equals unles> she 

 can clothe herself each season in a way that both to her and to 

 them would have looktxi preposterous a twelvemonth before. 



ll is odd that " dress reform " should always have meant some- 

 lliiiig ugly. There would be so tremendous a chance for anyone 

 who wished to reform dress in the interest of beauty ! 



SISTER NIVEDITA: AN ENGLISH HINDU SAINT. 



In the Modern Ririew for November Mrs. J- C. 

 Bose tells the story of Sister Nivedita. Her father 

 was an eloquent English clergyman, of great promise, 

 who had ungrudgingly sacrificed his young life in the 

 .service of the poor in Manchester. A friend of his, 

 a preacher in India, struck with the spiritual earnest- 

 ness of the child's face, blessed her and said that one 

 day the claim of India would touch her. Her father 

 too, before his death, told her young mother that one 

 day a great call would come for the child, and that 

 the mother should then stand by her. India, the 

 object of her daughter's devotion, hecatiie hers too, 

 and Indians always found a touch of home in he/ 

 house at Wimbledon. She became the centre of an 

 educational movement, of which the outcome was 

 the Sesame Club. Swami Vivekananda, preaching 

 in London, led to her offering her lifelong service to 

 India. She settled down in a street of the poor in 

 Calcutta and set to work to win the heart of the 

 |)eople by her patient life. First she got the children 

 into a Kindergarten, then the mothers came, orphans 

 and widows were trained as teachers, the House of 

 the Sisters was establislied. She maintaitied the 

 House and her school through her own writing and 

 the heij) of a friend who came to regard her as her 

 own daugiiter. She worked heroically in the plague 

 and in the famine. Her work wore her out, and 

 after thirteen years of life and service in India she 

 died on October 13th. She Iwd become a Hitidu, 

 but not an orthodox Hindu, an intense iialion.ilist, 

 and a great advocate of the development of tlie 

 masculine qualities in the Hindu's char.icler. 



