A WORD ABOUT MRS EVE. By Kate Thorn.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11738, 3 February 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

A WORD ABOUT MRS EVE. By Kate Thorn.

*Pne continually hears the statement that it is a glorious thing to have been born in these advanced days of the world, and we suppose it mint he so \ since so much is said to that effect. [ But, nevertheless, there were advan^ tages in time of Eve. . Eve never had to smila while her number two shoes were pinching her number seven feet, and the corns thereon, with greatest agony ; aud she never had to endure the awful uncertainty of not knowing whether or uot her shirtwaist and her skirt had parted company behind her back. She never took a header from her wheel, while the woman she hated sailed serenely by, and laughed at her to the companion vho rode behind her on that floe new 1900 tandem. F.ve never belonged to any women's clubs, and consequently she uever knewthe mortification of being defeated for the office of president by oue vote ; and she never uad to go home and vow by all that was snered that she wonld withdraw from that club before she would, submit to have that abominable Mrs De Smith wield the garvel over her. She dfd Dot hate to write papers for that same club on some topic of which she knew absolutely nothing, except what the cyclopedias told her, and stand np to read it with trembling knees and appalled heart — conscious all the time that those listening women were engaged in. criticising the "hang" cf her skirt, and the fit of her boots, and"the way ?he showed the place where that front tooth had ken rilled. Eve never Uy awake at nights waiting and watching for burglars to come oat from the city, and loot her diamonds and sealskins ; and it is to be presumed that she never looked under the bed for a man, since there was only one man around for the greater part of her life. Eve had the monopoly of the male population, so far as we are informed, and Athtin could not have flirted with his pretty typewriter, even had he beea bo disposed, for the said pretty typewriter had not been born. Eve never had to live with Adam's mother, and submit to being told that she was wasteful and extravagant, and slatternly, and enough to ruin the best man that ever lived ; and that it -was a pity Adam "had not married Sally Jenkins, or Dolly Jones, both of whom wore models, whose shoes Eve was not worthy to tie up. And she never had to listen while the mother- aforesaid recited the formula for cough syrup for little Cain, and mustard poultices for Abel's influenza. | And, better still, Adam never referred to the biscuit bis mother used to make, or the delightful way in which she could fit a collar band to a shirt, for it is no doubt a fact that there never was any old Mrs Adam. Eve never bad to make a five thousand' dollar show on fifteen hundred dollars a "year; and if she had neighbours in the land of Noel, or in the suburban country of the Hittites, she woul 1 not have spent her life in striving to outdo them, since it is to be presumed that fig leaves are pretty much alike the world, over. Ere did not have to kiss and make much of the woman she cordially hated, for that woman had no existence ; and if our first mother did nut have anyparticular friends, she did not have any bitter euemies. Eve is supposed to have been perfectly lovely ; but, fortunately for her, the photographers had not been born in her day, and nofprowling kodak fiend ever had a chance to get a snapshot at her ; and so we do not &cc Jier face on souvenir buttons, cigar boxes, wrappers of old continental oatmeal, envelopes o£ old petrified petroleum soap, or in the advertising sheets of patent medicine manufacturers, as one of the women who have been cured. That apple business wns a little unfortunate for a newly wedded pair, for it threw them out of a soft job ? but if it had been for that there would have been no young men to educate for the ministry, aud there would have been no. ■

theological schools, and no pastoral work, and tho men who preach onr quarters and our halves out oi our pockets on Sundays, and the missionaries who »ro willing to he eaten for the sake of the work in which they are interested, would have been in the class with the >l .Man with the Hoe," and it is lir.j^.l that they would have made two h's^rs of grass grow where one grew before. All situation* in life have their own peculiar advantages : and Eve,- though she was made s.> many thousand years ago, fitted t l ie circumstances which produced her ; and if ?he could step out from the dnst oi: the nges into the light of tlo [Wsent, in all her pmtine lovlincss, tbe smart lia-ile siecle girl wouM turn up her'iosß at herand pronouuee her a ''hack number."