"What's that? Well, I guess I would if I'd a thought of it in time, but
I was interested in the talk about the 'new woman'--I guess that's what
they called her. I said I didn't believe too much in the over-education
of females. That I'd rather be looked down to in lovin' tenderness than
up to in silent awe, and that men can't love and wonder at the same
time. I don't think men want to set women so high up that they're all
the time wonderin' how she got there an' if they dare to bring her down
to their level. I said that it seemed to me that love exchanged for
learnin' was a mighty poor bargain for the woman if she wanted
happiness; and one of the women that set at the table--the kind of
woman that can't hold a baby without its clothes comin' apart--said I
represented the old school. That things was changed now; that marriage
was not the ultimate objective--es, that's what she said, the ultimate
objective of women. I asked her what was the ultimate objective, and
she said, 'the cultivation of her own individuality, the freeing of her
soul.' I asked, couldn't she do it just as well with a man? and she
said, no, that man impeded woman's progress. I said that I guessed that
most women who said that hadn't never had no chance to git close enough
to a man to have him git in her way. I said I'd seen lots of women who
said they hated men, but they generally hadn't had a chance to find out
whether they could love 'em. I guess I was like a blind mule then,
kicking out in space and hittin' something accidental, 'cause she got
red and then I was sorry and I sort of tried to make it up. I said, 'Of
course there's lots of marriages that's mistakes, 'cause a lot of
people git married like they learn a job, take about three weeks to it,
and that's the reason there's so many poor workmen and poor marriage
jobs, but marriage must be a pretty good thing after all, 'cause I
never saw a widow who wasn't ready to try it again.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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