Are Women Considerate?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXI, Issue III, 18 July 1903, Page 213

Are Women Considerate?

By

the late MAX O’RELL.

I spend so much of my time singing the praises and extolling the virtues of women that I set myself thinking the other day and said to same self: “Now, surely women have not the monopoly of everything that is good under the sun; is there not some virtue, at least some quality which we men possess oftener than women?” And I thought hard, and finally succeeded, I believe, in discovering one. Ladies, I am of opinion that we men, as a rule, are more considerate than you for the feelings of others. That consideration is the characteristic and best trait of the perfect gentleman. Some women possess it; those whom I call gentlemanly women. But let us examine the case for women.

Women are not so punctual as men, and punctuality in keeping an appointment and engagements of all sorts is the best proof of one’s consideration for the feelings of other people. Although they may be members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, women will not get out of an omnibus when it stops before No. 52; they will let it start again and then call on the conductor to stop at No. 54, which is their destination. “Women are terrible,” once said to me the conductor of a London omnibus. “Why, sir, some of them wonder we can’t take them to their bedroom door!”

Women will go in a shop, wondering what it is they want; oftener wondering whether they want anything at all. They will settle down at a counter and make the assistant spread before them, one after another, all the goods he has in his department, look at them, turn up their noses at them, and go away without any apology, without even expressing regret that they did not find anything they wanted, much less saying to the poor man: “I am sorry to have made you waste your time.” Maybe, before leaving the premises, they will buy a yard of half-an-ineh wide ribbon for 6d. Now, I have always admired my sex

making a purchase in a shop. They are simply great. “1 want,” they will say, “a dozen pairs of socks, of such colour, of such size, and the best you have got— Good—You are sure they are the right size?—-Very good—‘No, no, don’t take the trouble to show me any more, those will do very nicely. How much? —Good —Here you are—Good morning.” It must be a pleasure to have men customers only to serve.

But see the women. Although they’ have found the exact article they want, you must not suppose that they are satisfied. They know they could not get anything more to their taste, anything more suitable, but they will let the poor shop girl go on showing her goods that have to be untied, unfolded and afterward refolded and retied. That’s not their business. They enjoy looking at the things. They have nothing else to do. It does not enter their heads that they are making the shop girl waste her time and tire herself; that if they would only go away that girl might make money with another customer. They will not take all that into consideration.

It is the custom in France, wnen you ask a street car conductor for the change of a five-franc piece, to give him one or two sous for his trouble. Men very seldom fail to give him a tip for this little service rendered. But I have seen women ask for the change of a twenty-franc piece, receive it without saying “Thank you,” much less giving a tip to the conductor, who had perhaps emptied his money-bag of all his silver to oblige them, but count and recount that change with a frown of suspicion on their brows until they were quite sure that they had not been cheated.

An English waiter once said to me: “When w T e wait on ladies, we find it twice the work it is to wait on gentlemen. They are so exacting. They will make us go downstairs half a dozen times, when, by giving their orders with some consideration, we should have to go only once. And, Lord! when we get a tip we go on a spree right away, it’s such a wonderful surprise!”

• And what is it that we call feminine amenities? I forget, but I fancy that in the expression the word “feminine”

could be appropriately replaced by "feline.”

A charming American lady, well known for her graceful hospitality, said to me: “1 would rather have ten men guests in my house for a month than a woman alone for a week.” “But why?” 1 asked. “Because with a woman in it, my house is no longer mine. She has no consideration for my servants, she has no consideration for myself. It is not that she is selfish, but she is thoughtless—that is to say, inconsiderate. I will not say that she gives trouble on purpose. Perhaps she does not know or even think that she does—but she does.” No doubt the lack of consideration for other people's feelings which we often notice in woman’s character comes from the notion, with which they generally go through life, that “you could not refuse this to a lady,” or that “it is

the privilege of a lady to do this, or to do that?’ “Ladies first” is a principle which 1 indorse from the bottom of my heart, but many women are often too inclined to act on it and to believe that, because they are women, everything should be forgiven to them. 1 have known women who were generous and most -considerate, but it cannot be said that th esse virtues are typical characteristics of their sex. Au contra ire!