The woman of to-morrow

by Helen M. Winslow

The secret of our late President McKinley’s strength was his mastery over self. He had himself under thorough control. He did not fear self-communion, for he was sanely balanced. The quality in him which appealed the most strongly to women, of course, was his unselfish devotion to his womenkind. His mother and his wife always stood first in his heart, and he was the good son and ideal husband before he was the soldier and the statesman. Some men seem to be ashamed of being true to their women-folk; President McKinley was great enough to respect all women and to love with a singularly unselfish devotion those belonging to him.

How much better this world would be if there were more such characters; if people were content to be simply true and faithful to their highest ideals, or rather were equal to the effort of living up to them. It is easy to lie awake at night or sit by the fire and dream of grand and noble deeds; it is another thing to carry those ideals right out into the workaday world and face the battles of life with them. So much depends on the way we carry them, however; if we carry the high ideals as a burden on our backs, they are not a success. Let us try using them as a shield.

There is one little book that I wish could be put into the hands of every woman. And then I should demand a promise that each one should read a chapter in it on retiring every night. It is called “The Magic Seven” and was written by Lida A. Churchill, who has struck a helpful chord in this little book that might go far toward transforming the world, if the world would stop long enough to read it.

The great need among women is to acquire self-poise and to learn self-control. This book comes nearer to teaching these than anything I have yet seen, although, of course, it all depends on the woman herself whether she will be calm and strong and self-reliant. As Miss Churchill says: “God Himself cannot give you anything which you are unwilling or unready to receive.”

Here is one of her formulas. Try it, and after saying it over every day in the quiet of your own room, or on the car, or in the midst of crowds, see if you are not more calm, more sure of yourself, more trustful of God:

“I am still of heart and of tongue. I invite, and I hold myself in the attitude to receive, the Intelligence which teaches, the Love which satisfies and protects, the Power which invincibilizes, the Peace which blesses. I admit nothing into my life which would prevent or hinder the greatest soul-receptivity. I wait in the silence with and for God.”

But we must not forget that it is the average woman who makes or unmakes life for us. She may not write books, nor paint pictures, nor become famous; but she is the home-maker—the mother of the world. And the Average Woman will continue right along at the old stand as wife and mother, but with an enlarged sense of outside responsibilities. She will vote wherever the law will let her and yet mind her baby. She will study polemics in clubs and higher mathematics all by her lonesome and yet continue to order the dinner and, if necessary, cook it herself; and owing to the spread of cooking schools and domestic science departments, it will be better cooked and more daintily served than of yore.

No; let us cease to worry about ourselves or fret our souls with the arguments of men who know next to nothing about us. Every man has his opinion about women as a class, but in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand his premises are all drawn from the women of his own household. So that if he sets us down as weak-brained, fickle, and vastly inferior to MAN, we can easily judge of the women of his immediate circle, and pity him accordingly.

The nineteenth century has seen a wonderful change in the position of woman all over the world. This remark is so trite that my pencil blushes to record it. The twentieth century is ushering woman in as a very decided factor in the world’s progress and will doubtless bring her into greater activities and prominence than ever; but God instituted woman a number of years ago, when He set certain limits to her physical development, and He has not yet shown any decided intention of changing her mental qualities into replicas of the biped He created a short time previous and called man, and we shall continue to be just plain women when all is said and done.