FEMININE CHIT-CHAT.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 66, 15 September 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

FEMININE CHIT-CHAT.

The Shut-In Society — .Any invalids who are shut in, males or females, can be corresponded with on enclosing their names and addresses to "Clio," E.L.C., Evening Post. I hear, with pleasure, that there is a Women's Political and Social League started here, and its members are mostly working-women. It was started in quite a humble way by its excellent President, and numbered but three members. It now numbers thirty- three. The weekly meetings are held in the Ballance Hal, and political and social questions are discussed. There have been a number of addresses given by the members on various subjects — "Our Schools, " " A Government Labour Bureau, ' ' '" On Sales of Work," " Anarchism," etc. I feel sure this League will do good. These hard working- women will gain much useful knowledge. They will learn that not only can they be good wives and mothers, but also good citizenesses, and will learn to enter into the questions of the day, and when the time comes will know how to vote from their own knowledge. They will find that they are units of a great whole, whose watchwordis — "Progress," andevery unit's work will tell. I wish the League every success, and shall he glad to give it a word in my Column occasionally. "Ouida" says — "It can scarcely be disputed, I think, that in the English language there are conspicuous, ut the present moment, two words which designate two "unmitigated bores" — the working-man and the woman. The new woman, be it remembered, meets us at every page of literature written in the English tongue, and each is convinced that on its own special "W " hangs tho future of the world. Both he and she want to have their values artificially raised and rated, and a 6tatus given to thorn by favour in lieu of desert. The whole kernel of the question lies in this. Woman will not surrender hor present privileges -i.e., she will still expect the man to stand, that she may sit ; the' man to get wet through, that she may use his umbrella. But if she retains these privileges, she can only do so by an appeal to his chivalry— 1.c., by a confession that she is weaker than he But she does not want to do this. She wants to get the comforts and concessions duo to feebleness, at the same lime as she demands the lion's share of power due to superior force alone. It is this over- weening and unreasonable grasping at both positions which will end in making her odious to man, and in her being probably kicked back roughly by him into the seolusion of the home." " J.M.D.," in the Argus, says that Lord Rosebery's mind is ceaselessly racked by the doubt whether he ought to make Louis Morris Poet Laureate, or let it alono. If the Tories come into office, they will make Alfred Austin Laureate. Hence the criticalness of the situation. Lewis Morris himself believes that anxiety about his claims drove Mr. Gladstone from office at the last. In an interview ho formuates the opinion that Swinbuno is tho right m»n to succeed Tennyeou. Failing him, Mr. Morris seems to consider that no first-clasß poet ought ever to be made Laureate. What is wanted is a good general utility man, civil, active, and obliging.