In fact nearly all nurses are pretty. I wonder why?
The hospital nurses during the day arrived at intervals to take my temperature, give me detestable nourishment, or bring me flowers or a telephone message. It certainly never occurred to me to pity any of them, and when they lingered to talk they entertained me with pleasant pictures of their days off. They struck me as being able to enjoy life very keenly, possibly because of being in a position to appreciate its contrasts.
I know the daughter of a wealthy and historic family, whose head—he is precisely the type of the elderly, cold-blooded, self-righteous, self-conscious New York aristocrat of the stage—will not permit her to gratify her desire to write for publication, "for," saith he, "I do not wish to see my honored name on the back of works of fiction."
I do not think, myself, that he has deprived the world of one more author, for if she had fiction in her brain-cells no parental dictum could keep it confined within the walls of her skull; but the point is that being a young woman of considerable energy and mental activity, she found mere society unendurable and finally persuaded her father to make her one of his secretaries. She learned not only stenography and typewriting but telegraphy. There is a private apparatus in their Newport home for her father's confidential work, and this she manipulates with the skill of a professional. If the fortunes of her family should go to pieces, she could find a position and support herself without the dismal and health-racking transition which is the fate of so many unfortunate girls suddenly bereft and wholly unprepared.
III
The snobbishness of this old gentleman is by no means a prerogative of New York's "old families." One finds it in every class of American men above the industrial. In Honoré Willsie's novel, Lydia of the Pines, an American novel of positive value, the father was a day laborer, as a matter of a fact (although of good old New England farming stock), earning a dollar and a half a day, and constantly bemoaning the fact; yet when "young Lydia," who was obliged to dress like a scarecrow, wished to earn her own pin-money by making fudge he objected violently. The itching pride of the American male deprives him of many comforts and sometimes of honor and freedom, because he will not let his wife use her abilities and her spare time. He will steal or embezzle rather than have the world look on while "his" wife ekes out the family income. The determined Frenchwomen have had their men in training for generations, and the wife is the business partner straight up to the haute bourgeoisie; but the American woman, for all her boasted tyranny over the busy male of her land, is either an expensive toy or a mere household drudge, until years and experience give her freedom of spirit. This war will do more to liberate her than that mild social earthquake called the suffrage movement. The rich women are working so hard that not only do they dress and entertain far less than formerly but their husbands are growing quite accustomed to their separate prominence and publicly admitted usefulness. The same may be said of groups of women in less conspicuous classes, and when the war is over it is safe to say these women will continue to do as they please. There is something insidiously fascinating in work to women that never have worked, not so much in the publicity it may give but in the sense of mental expansion; and, in the instance of war, the passion of usefulness, the sense of dedication to a high cause, the necessary frequent suppression of self, stamp the soul with an impress that never can be obliterated. That these women engaged in good works often quarrel like angry cats, or fight for their relief organization as a lioness would fight for her hungry cub, is beside the point. That is merely another way of admitting they are human beings; not necessarily women, but just human beings. As it was in the beginning, is now, etc. Far better let loose their angry passions in behalf of the men who are fighting to save the world from a reversion to barbarism, than rowing their dressmakers, glaring across the bridge table, and having their blood poisoned by eternal jealousy over some man.
And if it will hasten the emancipation of the American man from the thralldom of snobbery still another barrier will go down in the path of the average woman. Just consider for a moment how many men are failures. They struggle along until forty or forty-five "on their own," although fitted by nature to be clerks and no more, striving desperately to keep up appearances—for the sake of their own pride, for the sake of their families, even for the sake of being "looked up to" by their wife and observant offspring. But without real hope, because without real ability (they soon, unless fools, outlive the illusions of youth when the conquest of fortune was a matter of course) always in debt, and doomed to defeat.
How many women have said to me—women in their thirties or early forties, and with two or three children of increasing demands: "Oh, if I could help! How unjust of parents not to train girls to do something they can fall back on. I want to go to work myself and insure my children a good education and a start in the world, but what can I do? If I had been specialized in any one thing I'd use it now whether my husband liked it or not. But although I have plenty of energy and courage and feel that I could succeed in almost anything I haven't the least idea how to go about it."
If a woman's husband collapses into death or desuetude while her children are young, it certainly is the bounden duty of some member of her family to support her until her children are old enough to go to school, for no one can take her place in the home before that period. Moreover, her mind should be as free of anxiety as her body of strain. But what a ghastly reflection upon civilization it is when she is obliged to stand on her feet all day in a shop or factory, or make tempting edibles for some Woman's Exchange, because she cannot afford to spend time upon a belated training that might admit her lucratively to one of the professions or business industries.
The childless woman solves the problem with comparative ease. She invariably shows more energy and decision, provided, of course, these qualities have been latent within her.