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6
Worth Woman’s While
By all means use some time to be alone,
Salute thyself, see what thy soul doth wear;
Dare to look in thy chest, for ’tis thine own,
And tumble up and down what thou findest there.
—Herbert.
Novel Sentence of a Western Judge.
ANY good things have come out of the
West, but none better than the treat
ment of a certain wise and humane
judge for drunkenness, the habit with
which women have had to contend as far
back as the time of Mr. and Mrs. Noah,
and which certain good men have tried
by different ways and means to over
come in their weaker brethren. You
I
can hardly pick up a paper without seeing the ad
vertisement of some whiskey cure: and if all the
tales should be writ of the wives who in secret and
misgiving have sent off to these philanthropic doc
tors small sums guaranteed to relieve husbands of
thirst and homes of the awful shadow which hangs
over them—if the statistics could be compiled of
the cups of coffee men have drunk and the kinds of
powders injected therein by shaking fingers—Ah,
if the story of women's heartbreak could be put into
mere words I
Is there anything they have not had recourse to
from prayer to what one calls “drastic measures”
■—which with her means taking her husband’s
clothes and locking them up so that he cannot go
out? First, this woman would hide her man’s hat,
but finding he would take anything that happened
to be on the rack, his little son’s battered straw, or
even the baby girl’s bonnet, and thus head-geared
board the five o’clock car in the morning for the
city, she decided upon the whole of his raiment, se
cured when in the heaviness of sleep. For days and
weeks she has kept him shut in so—only to have
him finally get away and straight into deeper drunk
enness.
To see a man sitting around in his own house with
his hat on his head and holding on to his umbrella
fearful to let go either, lest it be promptly whisked
away, is a ludicrous picture looked at from one
point of view. Or to hear him storming, then en
treating, with promises to be good if only he may
be allowed his trousers. But there is the other!
What must be the mental state of the wife?
Powders do no good; humiliation in the safe se
clusion of the four walls of home is effective only
until the humiliated is let free; nothing that ever
the mind of woman has been able to suggest has
proven a sure remedy. And so with man’s devices
of the law. its fines and even imprisonments. Judge
Herr out in Kansas recognized it all. This man
whose desire is to help his fellow beings set to work
to think out a plan by which he as an officer could
deal with the problem the law 7 has never been able
to handle. And this is what he hit upon—this is
the punishment he determined on for drunkenness:
A sentence of two weeks in bed, with officers on
guard to see that it is complied with.
A simple cure, but how successful may be judged
from his own words:
“ After waiting to see the effect of the sentence I
am glad to say that it has had a most salutary ef
fect, as the man punished has been the most in
dustrious man in town since the expiration of his
term of enforced bedfastness, ten days ago.
U I have had considerable trouble with this man in
my several years of experience. I have fined him
a total of $2,500 for being drunk and resisting offi
cers, and have sent him to the county jail and to
the city prison, and have tried other means to get
him to consider his foolish ways. His latest punish
ment has been most effective, not only upon him,
but upon others who are not such persistent trans
gresssors. They have been very careful lest they,
too, should get a dose of confinement in bed.”
The Golden Age for August 23, 1906.
By FLORENCE TUCKER
And is it any wonder? Fancy a strong, active
man having to lie fourteen days, three hundred and
thirty-six hours, never for a moment from under the
unwinking gaze of a police officer—face to face with
the realization of his own ignominy. It is not like
ly one would ever willingly incur such sentence a
second time. And such a simple, harmless punish
ment! If only the ? were more Judge Herrs. If
only women everywhere could see their misguided
spouses thus straight again! It is a remedy which
appeals to all.
Setting Our Minds to It.
Mrs. Alice Hegan Rice has given us a good deal
of homely philosophy which taken with a smile is
always returned to with another, but nothing she
ever said has a sounder ring than this: “If you
want to be cheerful, jes’ set yer mind on it and do
it. Can’t none of us help what traits we start out
in life with, but we kin help what we end up with.”
Cheerfulness is the key-note to this wholesome
woman’s message, and here she gives the rule by
which w T e all may acquire it. It need not be a mat
ter of temperament; melancholia which w 7 e like to
lay to heredity, environment that, like circumstan
ces, gives color to moral and spiritual temper, may
be what they will and what they must —she admits
we cannot help what traits we start out in life with
—but, here is the hope and the encouragement, “we
kin help what we end up with.”
Just how far inherency may be overcome, how far,
because of it, we are helpless and so, perhaps, not
amenable, it w’ere safer not to argue. There are
times when even a little learning makes us mad, and
nowhere is it more true than in questions of moral
responsibility. When w T e begin to argue then are we
lost. What we want is to set about doing, never
minding the influence upon us of people or things—
if we want to be cheerful, just set our mind on it
and do it. There is all of sound common sense in
this, and the truest wisdom. Yes, and hope. Many
of ns have so given way under the pressure of what
we take to be untoward fortune that we fancy both
it and our spirit irremediably broken—we have so
much to make us sad, we have been sad so long, how
could we ever be glad again? We do not allow that
even hope is left us. “Yes,” we say, “I can see
how it could be so for other people but I ”
We must all insist upon being a little different from
others, our lot is peculiar in this or that.
It does not do to enter into the question too criti
cally. It is only to lose in the end. Rather, take
Mrs. Hegan’s advice—make up your mind to be
cheerful and set about it. Mental and moral (per
haps the trait were both) habits, like other things,
are only acquired through practice, and first, we
must begin. The woman who set herself the task
of laughing three times a day must have presented
a sorry spectacle in the beginning, but how else was
she to learn, how acquire the habit but by cultivat
ing it, and, the more surely, by doing it systematical
ly? Recognizing her growing in the opposite direc
tion she regarded a turn-about as duty—the culti
vation of cheerfulness is obviously one of the chief
duties of existence. And that reminds us of what
Paxton Hood says, that it is a beautiful arrange
ment of our nature that “that which is performed
as a duty may, by frequent repetitions, become a
habit, and the habit of stern virtue, so repulsive to
others, may hang around one’s neck like a wreath
of flowers.” Perhaps the wreath is made of all the
virtues represented by as many different flowers,
and surely none can be fairer than cheerfulness—
we do not know but maybe it is the rose, the very
queen of the garden.
The Common-Sense Cure.
The trouble with most of us is we do not take
time to mend up; our bodies become through over
tax run down, and soon, if we persist in disregard-
ing needed repairs, are laid off as out of use. Then
only do we begin to take notice, and rush off post
haste to an allopath to be doctored up with drugs
and treatment that bring us to a realizing sense of
our miserableness. There is some explanation in
the fact that nobody wants to be half sick and
thought to coddle himself unnecessarily, but reason
should tell us it were better to bear the misjudging
and even unkindness or ridicule of the thoughtless,
than to persevere in what can have but one end,
certain breakdown. For the woman who indulges
herself needlessly and at the expense of those
whose comfort depends upon her, there can be but
one word; but she who with taking care conserves
her strength will the least often give out, and so in
the long run hers is seen to have been the wiser
course.
Harper’s Bazaar speaks of the “common-sense
cure,” which may appear to some over-zealous peo
ple who never are overtaken of weakness or malady
a little lackadaisical, but to us looks eminently sen
sible—the most sensible thing, indeed, that has at
tracted our attention lately. Every one must have
observed the increased and increasing number of
sanitariums and sanatoriums of every kind, and the
overflow of them all with patients. It is the most
expensive means to which we can resort to get well
when sick. How much better, then, by taking care
and following the course here outlined, not to bring
this trouble upon ourselves and our friends, to be
saved suffering, the outlay of money, and the separ
ation from home and loved ones.
The cure which appears to us so reasonable is de
scribed as follows:
Suppose byway of summary, that the wise wo
man at home has decided to “overcome by yield
ing”—yielding physically and mentally—to the
common-sense cure. She has made out a daily
schedule of treatments, which is placarded on the
wall. Probably that perverted proverb “Many are
called, but few get up,” encourages her to inactivity.
If she has progressed to the enterprising stage, how
ever, she arises leisurely, arrays herself in comfort
able garments in no way impeding the circulation,
drinks two glasses of water, and starts for a stroll,
walking slowly and breathing deeply. She lingers
in the sunshine, for she has learned its therapeutic
power. After breakfast comes the relaxation on her
cot in the open air, followed by either the tub bath,
the massage, or the salt rub, two of each filling the
schedule. Before the dinner at one or two o’clock
she repeats the drinking of water and the walk—as,
indeed, she does before supper time, which may be
observed by the simple cup of malted milk—while
the siesta of the afternoon, which, at the sanitarium
is interrupted by vibratory massage given by ma
chinery, may have as its substitute at home a few
physical exercises. If the patient has not reached
the enterprising stage, the walks and the special af
ternoon treatment are dispensed with. Then at nine
o’clock she retires to rest undisturbed by nightmares
induced by indigestible sod, and repeating as her
prayer, “God bless the man who first invented
sleep.”
When things go wrong with you in the home,
when you teel ready to sit down and “have a good
cry,” because, perhaps, the temperature of the oven
has been too great, and your loaves, that should
have come out brown and crisp and toothsome, look
like burnt cinders, resist the temptation to give way
to your feelings. The enemy has come in on you
like a flood, it is true: but are you, in the strength
of your womanhood, and the consciousness of your
power over circumstances, going to lose your self
control, to allow an accident that will have complete
ly passed from your mind tomorrow to make you
miserable and unhappy today, even for an hour?
It is by calmly meeting these small vexations that
we are strengthened to overcome in the more serious
battles of life.—Selected.