Crellin, a young man of thirty-five, with the maturity of a long-time
father stamped upon him along with the marks of college and the
youthfulness of a man used to the open air and straight-living, showed
his appreciation of his employer's interest as he half-flushed under
his tan and nodded.
"Think it over," Forrest advised. "Make a statistic of all the college
girls--yes, and State Normal girls--you know. How many of them follow
career, and how many of them marry within two years after their degrees
and take to baby farming."
"Helen is very seriously bent on the matter," Crellin urged.
"Do you remember when I had my appendix out?" Forrest queried. "Well, I
had as fine a nurse as I ever saw and as nice a girl as ever walked on
two nice legs. She was just six months a full-fledged nurse, then. And
four months after that I had to send her a wedding present. She married
an automobile agent. She's lived in hotels ever since. She's never had
a chance to nurse--never a child of her own to bring through a bout
with colic. But... she has hopes... and, whether or not her hopes
materialize, she's confoundedly happy. But... what good was her nursing
apprenticeship?"
Just then an empty manure-spreader passed, forcing Crellin, on foot,
and Forrest, on his mare, to edge over to the side of the road. Forrest
glanced with kindling eye at the off mare of the machine, a huge,
symmetrical Shire whose own blue ribbons, and the blue ribbons of her
progeny, would have required an expert accountant to enumerate and
classify.
"Look at the Fotherington Princess," Forrest said, nodding at the mare
that warmed his eye. "She is a normal female. Only incidentally,
through thousands of years of domestic selection, has man evolved her
into a draught beast breeding true to kind. But being a draught-beast
is secondary. Primarily she is a female. Take them by and large, our
own human females, above all else, love us men and are intrinsically
maternal. There is no biological sanction for all the hurly burly of
woman to-day for suffrage and career."
"But there is an economic sanction," Crellin objected.
"True," his employer agreed, then proceeded to discount. "Our present
industrial system prevents marriage and compels woman to career. But,
remember, industrial systems come, and industrial systems go, while
biology runs on forever."
"It's rather hard to satisfy young women with marriage these days," the
hog-manager demurred.
Dick Forrest laughed incredulously.
"I don't know about that," he said. "There's your wife for an instance.
She with her sheepskin--classical scholar at that--well, what has she
done with it?... Two boys and three girls, I believe? As I remember
your telling me, she was engaged to you the whole last half of her
senior year."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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