OVER THE TEA-CUPS.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 80, 3 April 1909, Page 14

OVER THE TEA-CUPS.

"WHY 1. HAVE NEVER MARRIED."

A WOMAN EXPLAINS WHY SHE CHOSE SOLITARY LIFE AJS T D LIBERTY.

"As a professional woman under thirty, earning an income more than six times greater than that of the average man, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind—also the knowledge that I am stating the case of ■ thousands of other women at the same time—impels mc to set down juet why I have chosen my own life and liberty rather ttian the pursuit of .happiness—otherwise & husband." So writes Miss E. L. ftlillef in the "Sunday Magazine" of bh& "New York Tribune," and from her arttele we take the following brief extracts: — Sociologists declare, she writes, that we—the women who refuse marriage—■ are a menace to society. Perhaps we are. But no one knows the meaning of liberty, the savour of freedom, who has not been a slave. Therefore, it is not. surprising that the newly emancipated woman should hesitate to assume the shackles of matrimony, and, perhaps, in many cases refuse them altogether. Does any woman realise before marriage what it means to be a wife? I think not. In the hours not devoted to my work I have observed some wives and their husbands. , The result of these observations is that I hav<; concluded that to be a good wife means simply to be a mother to a fellow-creature whom you permit to treat you like a child. WHAT LOVE MEA^S. All the successful wives I know mother their husbands—regard them, indeed, as but the eldest of their children, and fi their absence speak of them as such. Vhy? Because only the mother heart can pardon, and, as a wise old Frenchwoman once remarked: ''Love, for a woman, is but a succession of endless forgivenesses." If I could be again the child I was at nineteen, I have no doubt I should marry and perhaps be just where and what I am now—plus a divorce. No woman wants to grew up. There is a saving instinct in all the young of our kind wJiich tells us it is better to see the Medusa face of the world through the shield of a man's love than to look on it fearlessly with our own eyes and thereby be turned to stone. For that, of course, is what happens in many cases; is, if men tell mc the truth, what ha-s happened to mc. These men, as comrades, I like immensely. Unhampered by the motif that seems to pervade the relation of every man to every attractive woman, their friendship •would be a delight. Frankly, I like men as companions far better than women. Yet this preference is entirely compatible with an utter distrust of man as a sex, an almost fanatical love of and loyalty to woman. Tears often come to my eyes in the presence of a great woman, author, musician, actress, wJioev-er has shown the world that our so-called sphere is not merely the unused segment of man's life. But it is only the abstract idea of woman that has any interest for mc. More simply, I, love woman and have Very little use lor women; whereas I resent men but like men very much. THE DECOROUS MASK OF EMOTION. Why won't men be friends with us? Why do they make, so far as women are concerned, friendship merely the decorous mask of their too facile emotions, to be thrown off at the first opportunity? Often I have sat at dinner or at the play with a man, and in an interval of conversation felt for the first time the thrill of a purely intellectual companionship. My mind would answer swiftly to ■hia epigram, and then —presto!—my answering epigram would be uttered perhaps with some slight gesture of the hand. The result? "Really, you should get yourself painted, if only to preserve those hand 3," or. if not that, some other equally irrelevant puerility that stripped mc of all mj' illusions and, metaphorically at least, sent mc back to the 'harem. Oh, that contempt of the brain, that worship of the brute! How it rankles, and how ineradicably it seems to be planted in the breast of the least superior male! 1 felt its sting for the first time when the least likely man of my acquaintance began paying mc attention. I was his superior physically—taller, stronger. We followed the same profession," and, though ten years younger, I was better known and more successful in it than he. Nevertheless, his intellectual attitude toward mc was, 1 could not disguise from myself, one of amused patronage. Now, as a colleague this man, who had an original mind, interested mc greatly. As a man, I could think of him only with repugnance, and therefore did not think of him at all. His was a strange ideal of womanhood, much corseted and sadly distorted by convention, and we never met that I did not outrage his mincing propriety. How he could have been willing to straight-jacket such a social rebel as I in the padded cell of his decorous heart I cannot imagine. One afternoon as he sat chatting harmlessly by my side, a perfectly incomprehensible fury of repugnance seizer , mc. t resolved to rid myself of his attentions. How? Always in dealing with such a problem there is one safe formula to follow. Ethically it may be questioned; but inevitably it succeeds. HOW TO END A KOr.TA^CE. If you wish to end one romance, foster or invent another. Rivalry stimulates, you think? It may in moderation; but if you deliberately transform yourself into a grinding bore on the subject of another man's perfections the most persistent suitor must inevitably give way. In this case I did not invent the. other man, lie just happened bo turn up, and by the law of contrast it was decreed (hat the puny man with a .brutal iritellect should be superseded by a brute with a puny brain. This young man's nllegiance and his leisure were quite openly divided between mc and football. His only idea of giving a girl a treat was to take her to wntch a game of hocke}' or polo. It really wouldn't do to marry a man who. however good looking, bored you so that you wanted to scream. I might prolong this Iliad by mentioning one or two more of my failures. I think I have had just the average woman's opportunities, and I am frankly glad that 1 rejected them and preserved m 3' freedom. Sometimes, if I go on a week-end visit to some married friends, I am tempted for the first hour or so to envy fcheir happiness. "What will be the end of your loneliness?" I ask myself. Then one thing or another pricks the bubble—symptoms of jealousy, boredom, of feminine fretfulness, or masculine obstinacy, and as I speed back home even the ear wheels seem to hum that famous line:

"Yet though thou slay mc will I trust in theel"