THE BAWLING BROTHERHOOD

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXVIII, Issue 105, 7 May 1894, Page 4

THE BAWLING BROTHERHOOD

The following vehement outburst on the woman question is from an artiole in the A'ovtJi American Review, by Sarah Grand, known to fame aa the authoress of the " Heavenly Twin.B" We presume it is a retort from the Shrieking Sisterhood. Wo have been reproached by Ruskin for shutting ourselves up behind park palings and garden walls, regardless of tho waste world that moans in misery without, and that has been too much our attitude ; but the day of our acquiescence is over. There is that in ourselves which forces us out oi our apathy ; we have no choice in the matter. When we hear tbe " Help 1 help 1 help ! " of the desolate aud the oppressed, and still more when we see the awful dumb despair of those who have lost even the hope of help, we must respond. This is often inconvenient to man, especially when he has seized upon a defenceless victim whom he would have destroyed had we not come to the rescue ; and so, because it is inconvenient to be exposed and thwarted, he snarls about tho end of all true womanliness, oants on the subject of the Sphere, and threatens that if we do not sit still at home with cotton-wool in our ears so that we cannot be stirred into having our sympathies aroused by his victims when they shriek, and with shades over our eyes that we may not see him in his degradation, we snail be afflicted with short hair, coarse skins, unsymmetrioal figures, loud voices, tastelessncss in dress, and an unattractive appearanoe and character generally, and then he will not love us anymore or marry us. Manliness is at a premium now because there is so little of it, and we are accused of aping men in order to conceal the side from whioh the contrast should be evidently drawn, Man in his manners becomes moro and more wanting until we seem to be near the time when there will be nothing left of him but the old Adam, who said " It wasn't me."

Of course, it will be retorted that the past has been improved upon in our day.; but that is not a fair comparison. We walk by the eleotrio light: our ancestors had oniy oil-lamps. We can see what we are doing and where we are going, and should be as much better as we know how to be. But where our men ?' Where is the chivalry, the truth, and affection, the earnest puruose, the plain living, high thinking, and noble self-sacrifice that made a man ? We look in vain among the bulk of our writers even for appreciation of these qualities. With the younger men all that is usually cultivated is that flippant smartness which is synonymous with cheapness. There is such a want of wit amongst them, too, such a lack of variety, such monotony of threadbare subjects worked to death ! Their " comio" papers subsist upon repetition of those three venerable jestß, the mother inlaw, somebody drunk, and an edifying deception successfully practised by an unfaithful husband or wife. As 'they have nothing true so they have nothing new to give üb, nothing either to expond the heart or move us to happy mirth. Their idea of beauty threatens al ways to be satisfied with the ballet dancer's legs,pretty enough things in their way, but not worth.men.iomng as au aid to tho moral, intellectual) and physical strength that make a man. They are sadly deficient iv imagination, too ; that old fallucy to whioh* they cling, tbat beoause an evil thing has always beon, therefore it must always continue, is as much the result ol want of imagination as oi tho man's trick of evading the responsibility ol seeing right done in any matter that does not immediately affeot his personal comfort. But thero is one thing tho youuger men are speoially good at, and, that is giving thoir opinion; this they do to each other's admiration until thoy verily believo it to be worth something. Yet they do not even know where we are in the history of tho world. Ouo of thorn only lately, doubtless by way of ingratiating himsolf with the rest of tho Bawling Brotherhood, aotually proposed to reintroduce the Acts of the Apostlcs-of-the-Favements ; ho was ap. parently quits unaware ol tho fact that themotheis of the English race are too strong to allow themselves to be insulted by the reimpositiou of auother most shocking degradation upon their sex. Let him who is responsible for the tcouomio position whioh forces women down be punished for the consequence. Tho Bawling Brotherhood havo been seeing rt flections of themselves lately whioh did not flatter thorn, but their conceit survives, and they cling con. fidently to tho delusion that they are truly all that iB admirable, and it is the mirror that is in fault. Mirrorß may be either a distorting or a flattering medium, but women do not caro to see life any longer in a glass darkly.