The woman of to-morrow

by Helen M. Winslow

Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

The modern “passion for organization” has done more for the friendships of women than anything else has ever done. It has lifted the ordinary woman from the plane of petty gossip and trivial interest in each other’s every-day affairs, and it has, in part at least, killed out that love of gossip which in times past men have delighted to ascribe to women as their especial prerogative; although for that matter some of the worst gossips I have ever known are men. Long ago, when clubs and societies were first started, the club may have been a promoter of gossip just the same as the sewing bee and the church social were in earlier days. Women were not trained then to think great thoughts, to live on a plane where the comings and goings of their neighbors are beneath them, to take so broad and lofty an outlook upon affairs in general as to be incapable of scrutiny of the insignificant motives of their friends.

After working together for others, women begin to recognize in one another the loftier ideals and higher ambitions. When we are lifted upon the peak of high living ourselves, we are not so isolated as perhaps we once thought we should be; on the contrary, we are able to see many others who are striving to reach the summit of high thinking and worthy endeavor. Women have needed this outlook in ages past, while they are but just coming to their own, and although we may have reached the state where we are able to endure our own company, and to find comfort in the inner life, we need the friendship of others; we need the sunshine of good company to bring out the best that is in ourselves.

We may think we can do without other people, or that we do not care what other women think of us, but we all know that we do and that we depend on one another for help and for comfort. If we are inclined to too much introspection or to looking upon the dark side of things it is well to take pattern after Dr. Johnson and “live in a crowd of jollity,” at least so far as to get out of our own solitary chambers and fling ourselves into something which is their polar opposite. The ordinary woman needs contact with her intellectual mates in order that she may get out of the small round of her daily sympathies and interests. Dr. Johnson was the greatest hypochondriac in the world, but when once aroused by stimulating contact with the wise and the erudite, the change was like that in the forlorn, drooping eagle in a cage to the same bird when free to soar into the limitless space above.

It is this need that is bringing the rich woman into closer association with her poorer sister. This mutual contact is helpful. The one learns that riches do not buy brains and refinement; the other finds out that poverty does not preclude the possibility of richness of intellect and gentle manners. If one wears Paris gowns and another is severely plain in her costumes, there need not be any difference in the attire of their ideas. The one sees that an unfashionable garment may clothe a body containing a mind that is above rubies, that “the rank is but the guinea’s stamp—the man’s a man for a’ that.” The other discovers that her next neighbor, whom she considered a toy of fashion, has a soul and some lofty aspirations. Companionship with other women renders a woman more lenient, more sincere and more sympathetic. The pettiness of personal aims is dying out in the presence of humanity’s needs.

We should not forget that a barbed wire fence shuts out more than it shuts in. Social barriers cannot set aside mental and spiritual harmonies, for the force of personality is becoming the supreme force, before which custom and conservatism must yield. The standard by which all must judge each other is high, unselfish womanhood. The result of woman’s individual growth is nowhere more apparent than in the home, the corner-stone of civilization, and in her friendships.

Mrs. Croly declared that the passion for associated effort was far greater than any one woman, and that no woman who sought only her own personal aggrandizement could possibly have more than a transitory, fleeting fame. How true her words have proved can easily be computed by any of us. We all know women who, through personal machination or what is even more contemptible, the unscrupulous use of their friends, have risen to high positions; but who let ambition get the better of their judgment, and consequently, though clinging tenaciously to place and grasping violently at position, were finally engulfed in the sea of oblivion.

But, happily, these women are fewer and fewer as the years roll by, and consequently the limitations of self are giving way to the largeness of a universal idea.

To enter upon any labor worthy the honest effort of any earnest woman with the selfish spirit dominant within, is not only to fail ultimately by the personal measure, but to degrade the work itself to the level of the spirit in which it was undertaken; to enter upon the most unpretending labor simply because of duty, nobly because of the possibility for others, is not only to beautify the worker, but to glorify the work.