FIVE FEARS OF WOMEN.

Bush Advocate, Volume XVII, Issue 131, 13 June 1905, Page 3

FIVE FEARS OF WOMEN.

j By Dorothy Dix. 4— LOSS OP MONEY AND FRIENDS

The fourth fear of woman is tbo haunt* ing dread that she may lose property and friends, and be forced to end her days in i bitter poverty and dependence. In nothing do men and women differ more than in the manner in which they regard the future. When a man looks forward he sees himself gayly automobiling into a palace, but when a woman looks ahead she beholda herself old, penniless and friendless, toiling over the hills to the poorhouse. Somewhere on every woman's horizon stands the forbidding shadow of a "Home for Indigent Widows," or a "Spinsters' . Eetreat," and she lives in perpetual terror. no matter how rich she is, of not being able to escape it. Charity workers say that thero is never any difficulty in getting women to subscribe money to build and support asylums for old women. They give freely to such institutions because they feel a proprietary interest in them and fully expect to land iv one of them in old ago. THEY SCRIMP AND SAVE. All women share in this fear of the poorhoxise. It is what makes the rich woman get her money in Government bonds and real estate, where it can't get away from her. It is what makes the ill-paid working woman deny herself the comforts she needs to save up something. It is what makes the ignorant and distrustful woman keep her little hoard hidden in some place where she can take it out and see it, instead of putting it ia the bank. They are all trying to ward off, as best they can, the thing they dread most in the world, and there is no denying that • woman gets more spiritual support and comfort, from her bank book than from all the volumes of philosophy and ethics that were ever written. It is the ever present apprehension that some day they may lose their property and come to actual physical suffering that

makes women stingy. Naturally they aro not penurious, and if they should exercise tlio ghost of poverty t'..;t stalks them down they would love t ■ give. But they can't.

They can't shake off the feeling that no matter how comfortably oti they may be at the present moment a time will come when they will be in need, and so .they cling to every cent as a drowning man does to a straw, for the dollar mark is to a woman the sacred amulet that alone can protect her against her fears. Therefore she holds on to it with both hands.

SHE PICTURES HER FUTURE. Tigris is true, oven in the most expansive and extravagant moment when she is spending her own money. Wild horses couldn't drag the admission out of women, but it is a solemn fact that no matter how badly on© wants a thing, the instant she has bought it she experiences a wild panic in which she foresees herself reduced to beggary through having spent her money, and pitiously rattling a cup on the street corner while she reproaches herself for past indulgences. This consuming dread of a future in the poorhouse also explains woman's many fruitless economies and general cheeseparing policy. It isn't because a woman enjoys having her attic cluttered up with old furniture and trunks packed full of rotting clothes that she doesn't give them to people to whom they would bo a godsend. She is simply afraid to give them away for feax she may some time need them. At this minute she should be able to buy carred mahogany and Persian lamb, but she has visions of herself sitting on a hard bench in the poorhouse and lacking flannel to cover her poor, old rheumatic bones, and so she sacrifices the good she might do to an imaginary horror.

THEY SHUT OUT HAPPINESS. This fear of the poorhoxise that women entertain is very sad because it Eeeps them from ever enjoying fully the blessings they have. There are plenty of women who are born rich", and live rich, and leave large estates for their children to squabble over when they die, who live in such a state of fear of poverty that they never really get any good of their prosperity. They cannot enjoy the feast dreading the famine, they cannot enjoy their horses and carriages for thinking how tired they would be if they ever have to walk; they build their imaginary poorhouses so near that it shuts the sunshine out of their palaces.

If women could only rid themselves of the fear of losing their property they would be immeasurably happier, and as a mascot to do away with their favourite hoodoo I give these twa suggestions. First, that money is the easiest thing in the world to keep, and the only thing that makes for .happiness that we can bo sure of holding on to.

And, secondly, that even if we do loso our property, poverty isn't half as bad as our fear of it. In these days the poorhouse is steam heated and has hixuries of which our grandmothers, who lived in. the same apprehension as we do, never dreamed. So why dread it?