The woman of to-morrow

by Helen M. Winslow

There is nothing that develops a woman better, or that broadens her character more than a club life. Give her something to think about, something to take away with her when she comes into the club; she will soon be willing to do her share of the work, and then she will begin to grow. Many a fine president of to-day can recall the time when she was afraid of her own voice, when she accepted her first bit of committee work with fear and trembling. And she knows that the years between have been years of growth and helpfulness and work for others. For, after all, that is the true secret of the good club woman—helpfulness to others. She who goes on to committees and works her way through the lower offices and up to the president’s chair simply from personal ambition and self-seeking pride, is not the good club woman, nor the really successful one. For in these modern days personal ambition is more plainly discerned than it used to be, and the woman who climbs into the presidential chair merely for personal glorification is not destined to sit there long.

There must be a higher, a more altruistic purpose. The best president is she who is so full of plans for the elevation of the club and the development of every member that she forgets herself. And so she becomes at once the servant and the queen of clubs. In short, the club movement is to-day one of the greatest factors in the world’s progress; and he or she who proclaims a disbelief in it because of the shortcomings of some few club acquaintances lacks the faculty of a comprehensive perception of the things of to-day as well as of prophetic insight into the future.

But when your club begins to be a bore, it is time to leave it. It is a mistake to hold that by staying in it with a sense of resignation you are discharging any sort of a duty to yourself or anybody. The fault is either with you or the club, of course. If it is the former, you can drop your connection with it without formality, with the understanding with yourself that it is to be taken up again after a little; if it is the latter, you would do better to go to work so to change the aspect of the club that it will hold all of its old interest for you. But if you do take a vacation in this fashion yourself, you need not be afraid of losing interest altogether. The certain result will be only a feeling of being outside everything and alien in interest to that of your friends, and the end so brought about will be the one you want. You will go back to your club with a new appreciation and be of new service to it. When a club gets to be an unpleasant duty its best function is missing. The self-seeking, ambitious woman, the woman who uses the club merely as a pedestal on which to pose before an admiring world, or as a stepping-stone to get into a higher grade of society than she has previously known, having only her own selfish aims at heart, has only a short-lived success, and appears with less frequency every season. The club does not want and will not keep such women as leaders. To-day the club leader must have a higher aim and a broader culture, and, added unto these, a genuine desire to help humanity to better things than the superficial woman who “must stand in the full glare of the footlights at any cost.”

More than that, the woman who sees in the club movement of to-day nothing beyond that very primitive stage when women wrote papers from encyclopediac notes, or when they begged or hired some other person to write them, has not passed the a b c class of the women’s clubs. It is a beautiful idea, isn’t it? that to-day women are reaching hands across mountains and plains and establishing hearty, whole-souled friendships in every part of this great country. What would our grandmothers have said at the very idea of corresponding freely and intimately with women of whose ancestors they knew nothing and whose names, even, they had not heard a few months before? It is one of the beauties of the club movement of to-day, that we are opening our hearts to each other in this way: that our ideas of helpfulness make us forget the old conventionalities and that the broader outlook which belongs to the woman of to-day is contagious. For it is impossible to get drawn into this larger view of club life and remain contented with a narrow horizon. We are bound to grow and to throw off the shackles of prejudice and pettiness. We cannot help it.

Of course, there are certain dangers connected with club life. Our activities multiply and we are in danger of being drawn into a vortex that will threaten to swallow us. When the club season begins some of us will venture into the outer edge of a whirlpool that, unless we can manage to hold ourselves steady and keep our mental poise, will suck us under, and we shall go on and on in the concentric circles until we are wrecked, nerves and mind. There is little doubt that overwork in so-called “club-duty” has reduced more than one woman to nervous prostration. This is a gloomy view of the case, I know, and I shall be blamed for giving utterance to it; but is it not the truth? Are we not too apt to take ourselves too seriously? If we are individually of “greater value than many sparrows,” are we not individually of greater value, to ourselves and our families at least, than many clubs?

Not but what the club stands for a serious part of our life-work; not but what we should be willing to bring to it the best of ourselves and most earnest labors and affection. But what I deprecate is the mistaken view of club work which we are in imminent danger of taking. When we allow ourselves to be drawn into the whirling vortex made up of club classes, too many clubs with the varying interests, too great a multiplicity of club committees, receptions and club teas by the score, until the very name of them nauseates us, the scramble for office (either for ourselves or our friends) and the numerous petty trials and tribulations that follow in the wake of all these things; then we are not getting the best results from club work ourselves, nor giving them to others, either. “There is but one way to become a perfect, all-round club woman, and that is by being a perfect all-round woman.” And the first essential for that is, to find and keep our mental poise—to make ourselves something more than a social chatterbox or a bundle of nerves.

Those writers who are fond of descanting on the injury to the home that attends club membership seldom understand their subject. As one woman, responding to a toast on “The Club Husband,” puts it:

“The unwritten law of the ideal women’s club is: This club exists for the happiness of the whole family. When that ceases, the club’s reason for existence will cease. So long as we are thus considerate, never allowing our club life to absorb the attention that belongs to our home life, just so long may our club husband snap his fingers at the people who try to pity him. Let the critics carp. They are like the young girl who walked through her uncle’s chair-factory, and gazed at the rows upon rows of chairs, saying, ‘Why, uncle, what can you ever do with all these chairs?’

“‘Don’t you fret, Maria, settin’-down ain’t goin’ out o’ fashion!’