Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June"Woman's Press Club of New York City
History
Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June"
Woman's Press Club of New York City
Croly, J. C. (Jane Cunningham), 1829-1901; Sorosis (New York, N.Y.); Women -- Societies and clubs -- History
For these people and their children there is only the street. The
children occupy the street. For four or five months in the year they
make life hideous, especially on Sunday, by noise and exhibition of
vandalism that would disgrace the savages of any age or nation. The
police acknowledge themselves powerless to prevent it. It is simply
the exercise of undirected faculty which might be turned to account,
but which has only noise, confusion, and street warfare for its
opportunity for exercise.
There are possibilities in these congregations of the highways and
byways, and when we have our people's church or churches, open all the
year, and all the night as well as all the day, and the voices of the
angels for sweetness, singing love and peace on earth, in an anthem
that pierces the roof, and with the tones of a mighty organ to
emphasize to all the world its message, and it is not a question of
clothes, many people will be glad to listen, and will find an
influence in the music, in the willingness, in the free-heartedness,
in the sympathy, in the kindness, in the spirit of brotherhood, that
they would not get out of preaching nor dogma.
Whom are we waiting for to build this church? Is it a woman? Surely it
is an opportunity that carries the two-fold blessing.
Notes, Letters and Stray Leaves
A "free lance" is less free than the organs of a party. In one case it
means at least the opinions of a group; in the other, the dogmatism of
the one who wields the lance. Nothing is less free than the
self-styled freedom of the individual.
Enthusiasm implies a certain narrowness of vision. When people can
take a broad view they can see the elements of goodness or beauty
everywhere, and they cease to be enthusiastic in regard to one. The
great popular preachers are not university men, or those who are quiet
and literary in style, but strong, dogmatic men.
Perhaps the most noticeable difference between the so-called new woman
and the new man is this, that she is seizing every opportunity that
opens up new avenues of individual employment, while he is discovering
and storing energy to save himself from doing any work at all. The old
man made other men, and women too, work for him, the new man is making
the hitherto uncontrolled forces his servants, locking them up in such
small compass that a twist of the wrist will start the crash of
worlds.
The notes of the great god Pan, so "piercingly sweet by the river"--a
far cry and a weary way from Pan to Handel and Beethoven; yet during
all that time music has been the joy and the consolation of
peoples,--all except the Quakers.
If Poetry is the prophet of the future, music expresses all
emotions,--love, joy, fear, above all, aspiration. Music is
essentially religious, and has inspired the most perfect forms of
emotional composition we know.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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