Are Women Growing More Polite

Southland Times, Issue 12124, 2 May 1908, Page 4 (Supplement)

Are Women Growing More Polite

A writer in the February issue of tin' American Magazine believes that women's manners to each other are improving. it is to be hoped so. for they could hardly gel any worse. She says sue can remember the time when in the sleeping-car. on Ihe street-ear. at (lie hotel, even on the side-walk, women were almost uniformly selfish and supercilious. The writer in question may still be in the first flush of an exquisite youth, and still remember all this without putting any breaking strain upon her memory. She continues : Do you remember the comedy of rising in the old Pullman car when the woman’s washroom could be locked? The early riser would bolt herself in and make leisurely toilet, while a rapidly increasing crowd of angry, half-clad vented their impatience by jostling, women packed at the end of the car, pounding on the dour, appealing to liio authorities. I have seen this selfish occupation of a toilet-room carried so far that the train officials were obliged to eject the selfish one. and I have been told by good authority that the nuisance became so great that it led to the substitution of the open room. But the open room did not end the trouble. If you could not be kept out you could be made most uncomfortable by those who preceded you, by the woman spreading ihc contents of a largo suit case over thrnequarters of the room and grumbling because she, did not have the remaining fourth : by the woman who left the wash,stand sprinkled with powder, howl unwiped. and soiled towels heaped everywhere : hy the woman who elbowed and crowded and east back glances. " Mnt 1 sen and hear very much less of all this, in a recent trip across the continent (here were mi women in my car, and one of th an confided in me toward the cud of liie trip that there hud not been a • orning when they did not put them-' t at to button one another’-; wain;. '