PERSONAL PROBLEMS
Here is a "Personal" of distinct interest.
May it reach its mark!
"WANTED:
"By a Socialist woman of mature years, a congenial person of similar sex, education and tastes to share with her the expense of a country home in the mountains, and the study—as far as may be agreeable—of nature, music, literature, sociology and socialism. No objection to Suffragette or Vegetarian, but advocates of Anarchism or Free Love are hereby contra-indicated. Credentials to be frankly exchanged with personal history. Address: The Widow Baucis, Care of The Forerunner, 67 Wall St., New York City."
*
Apropos of the above, there are no more intimate and pressing problems than those of the business of living, the mere every day processes.
We are still so hampered by the customs and habits of the proprietary family that we assume as a matter of course that one must live, first, in childhood and youth, with one's parental family; second, in middle life, with one's matrimonial family; and third in age, with one's descendants.
Now suppose one is of age, unmarried, and not fond of living with one's parents. This is not wicked. It is not extremely unusual. One may be very fond of one's parents, as parents, yet prefer other society in daily life. Enforced residence in the same home of a number of grown people of widely different ages, interests, and ideas, is not made happy by the fact of blood-relationship.
There are many indications to show an increasing divergence of tastes between our rapidly changing generations. Each set of young people seem to differ more sharply from their parents than they, in their youth, similarly differed.
Moreover, there are a number of persons who do not marry, and yet have a right to live—yes, and to enjoy living.
Men have long ago solved this problem to their own satisfaction. They leave home early; they have learned in cabin, camp and club to live in groups, without women; and many, with an apartment of their own as a base, seem to find enough society in visits among their friends.
But women are only beginning to realize that it is possible to live, yes, and to have a "home," even if one has not, in the original sense, "a family." The amount of happiness that really congenial friends can find in living together is fully as great as that of some marriages; and quite outside of daily contact in the household remains that boundless field of strength, stimulus and delight which comes of true social contact.
But the machinery of life is all arranged for married couples; who rightly constitute the majority; and the unmarried woman is not allowed for. She is, however, rapidly awakening to the fact that she has an actual individual existence—as well as a potential marital existence; and is learning how to use and enjoy it.
PLAYTIME
AUNT ELIZA
(This was done by two persons, in alternate lines, as a game.)
Seven days had Aunt Eliza
Read the Boston Advertiser,
Seven days on end;
But in spite of her persistence
Still she met with some resistance
From her bosom friend.
Thomas Brown, the Undertaker,
Who declared he'd have to shake her,
Daily called at ten;
Asking if dear Aunt's condition
Would allow of his admission,
With his corps of men.
Aunt Eliza heard him pleading,
Ceased an instant from her reading,
Softly downward stole;
Soon broke up the conversation,
Punctuating Brown's oration,
With a shower of coal.
THE CRIPPLE
There are such things as feet, human feet;
But these she does not use;
Firm and supple, white and sweet,
Softly graceful, lightly fleet,
For comfort, beauty, service meet—
There are feet, human feet,
These she does with scorn refuse—
Preferring shoes.
There are such things as shoes—human shoes;
Though scant and rare the proof;
Serviceable, soft and strong,
Pleasant, comely, wearing long,
Easy as a well-known song—
There are shoes, human shoes,
But from these she holds aloof—
Prefers the hoof!
There are such things as hoofs, sub-human hoofs,
High-heeled, sharp anomalies;
Small and pinching, hard and black,
Shiny as a beetle's back,
Cloven, clattering on the track,
There are hoofs, sub-human hoofs,
She cares not for truth, nor ease—
Preferring these!