THE RETIRING PARTNER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15375, 9 August 1913, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE RETIRING PARTNER.

BT FRANK MORTON".

Untii, quite recently the homo was con-

trolled by two partners— husband, head of the house, and the wife, head of the household. These partners stood on

a broad basis of equality, but were interpendent. They discuisscd variety of views

affecting their common interests in a tolerant and gentle spirit. The head of the house gladly accepted responsibility for the protection, security, and comfort of his wife and to the wife, ,as head of the household, the beautiful one, the husband entrusted the welfare of his children and the preservation of his most intimate private honour. The. husband went forth daily to battle with the world; the wife was left to deal with the enemies

inside the gate. i He fought with lions in the way. She dressed his wounds when, he returned home, and in his absence often fought with foes of whose mere exist

ance he had no knowledge or suspicion. In numberless cases hers was the harder fight, hers the crueller naiu, hers the slower agony. . She had, however, her compensations ; for she understood, as'" man never has understood; and probably never

can be brought to understand, the perfect joy of service. These true women of the good days regarded their sex as their gift from God, their distinction, their. justification,their glory; and not as their disability, their weakness, or their handicap. They were poor ignorant, creatures, no doubt: but they were the mothers of men, the consolers of the afflicted, the saints and saviours of humanity; they inspired the great deeds and the great songs of the world. l

Then gradually came the change. The head of the household, while still eager and willing to take her part of the profits of the firm, to take a little over as op-portunity-occurred, commenced to go out privily, neglecting; the proper duties of her partnership, having it in her mind to set ,up an opposition establishment, When her partner protested she stole his goods, destroyed his gardens, broke his windows; but if she happened to; be bruised or offended in some; rough-and-tumble of the byways of her resort she would straightway come whimpering back to her partner and demand his sympathy. Being' a soft-headed fool at best., he often gave his sympathy cordially enough. Even on occasions when he was cooler and more shrewd ... he affected sympathy a* a means of avoiding argument. / Leaving this tiresome labyrinth of allegory, let me say that it is dawning upon me. that the general position is becoming a Utile queer. Wherever I go I find on the one hand men who toil and curse and

j sweat as they: wrest a living from the j reluctant gods, and on the other women i luxuriously dressed and given over.to the ] pursuit of folly.' For a woman to • admit her delight in housewifery, to confess to an enthusiasm for cookery, : domestic management, or any of the ancient homely arts—this nowadays •is apt to mark a woman for a nincompoop and a fool. The world is simply crowded with useless petticoated spoilers of the vineyard, who spend ; a lot of lime telling each; other how-much they "hate" housework. Al-

ready • the parasitewomen—the women, who organise hysterical: conspiracies, who Write silly or venomenons books for \ the perversion of the vulgar and the frivolous who* chatter around tea-tables -in 'their pestilent haste to make, manifest , their pathetic ignorance of everything under.the sun—ralready the parasite-women are - affecting to look down with lofty contempt or pity, on the women who bear men-chil- | dren and lead ordered lives to useful ends. I The ; ioval woman who spends her life as the joy of her household - and ttic delight of her kin is of more actual and potential value in Jthe world" than any million of i your Piinkhurste and Corellis could be— if in the goodness of God any million of your, Panknursts and Corellis could con- ' ceivably be ;at all. I have been calledJ naughty names by a host of perfect strangers. I have been taunted as Bo hemian and anarchist and scoffer, and , I j know not what besides. But I am more j than ever convinced as the days go by ! that the most beautiful and benign creature : ever evolved from the' brain of- God is the honest woman happy in her quiet home. In her lies the hope of the race; ill her the hope of the race has always lain. Empires may crumble, dynasties may, totter, and vanish in a- dust of dull oblivion; but while the'home-woman holds her own. and is true to her star, the human race is safe. Let her be free as you will, free to follow her dream or to fight with beasts at Ephesus; but whoever shall seek to belittle her, whoever 'shall attempt to besmirch her high ideal and her constant hope, let his name be Anathema! For I go, where individual freedom . is concerned, much farther than the wildest suffragettes go. I simply laugh at the preposterous idea that man is superior to woman. I believe that woman is in a thousand ways superior to man. Due sustenance and protection are her right, for the greatest of ail responsibilities and privileges (which is hers} entails physical disabilities, and an increasing unfitness for the rough and turbulent ways of life. I hold that every being born is in his own right a sovereign , pereon; every woman as well as every man. The man who thinks his wife should yield her individual will to his is a. fool; but the man who seeks to break down his wife's individual will is the sort of brute that in a purer civilisation would be promptly hanged. The marriage contract is a serious agreement between two loving persons to jmaka common cause against the ills of life, against the manifold perils of the' struggle for existence. If persons do not love absolutely they have no right to enter into a contract the terms of which they can by no means carry out. If I marry a woman, with the intent that she shall be my comrade and best adviser, my .friend, and the mother of my children, and if she lets my household go to the dogs while she harangues contemptuous mobs and sticks hatpins into policemen, I have surely every right to hold and to'declare that'she has forfeited all claims to consideration and advantage as a member of the firm. For if I fail in my duty—if, that is to fay, I do not fight the wolves outside and feed the lambs within the fold —if I don't provide my lady with adequate means for her innocent foolish pleasures and the due bedeckment of her person-—she is likely to take mighty good care that the world knows all about it. I suppose there at least fifty thousand women in New Zealand (pray note how charitable a man I am !). who might reasonably be prosecuted by their husbands for not attending to the spiritual and moral maintenance of their, children; but one never hears of poor, patient, confiding man instituting such proceedings. Them are good mothers; and good mothers, happily for all of us, are in the, majority. But there are bad mothers in plenty, and the bad mother of any degree you may class as the devil's busiest lieutenant. Often enough she has higher rank. It is because the retiring partner threatens the honour and dignity of motherhood that- I personally feel aggrieved by her antics. I don't care twopence, for a woman's petty extravagance, lor her stupid generalisations about, matters that she doesn't in the least understand, for her vixenish, spite in trifles, for the desperate unfairness of her judgments, for the vindictive malignity of her occasional hates—-these things are of the eternal feminine, and they only show as spots on the sun. But when wofien begin to put the street and the gutter, the foetid haunts and muddied ways of men. above the claims of home and motherhood's highduties. I begin to fee! that' we have reached those perilous times of whose coming St. .Paul once warned .St. Timothy. I think it was St. Timothy ; but you will pardon me if. in the driving life of a busy man, the saints have become a trifle mixed. (