A FALSE ASSUMPTION
Do you, sensible and amenable reader, lead the way to better things; loosen at least one buckle of the harness that bows many a fine spirit to breaking, and makes the church a smoke in the nostrils of unprejudiced outsiders. Separate ecclesiastical from social relations. Owe your right to call a fellow parishioner “friend,” and to visit at manse or parsonage, or rectory, to what you are—not to the adventitious circumstance of being a member in good standing in a fashionable, or an unfashionable, church. Exact no consideration from those who belong with you to the household of faith on the ground of that spiritual “fellowship.” The position is false; the claim ignoble.
No matter what church one is in, one should always try to conform as far as possible to its order of worship. Not to do this shows a want of proper reverence.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE WOMAN’S CLUB
THE TOLERANT ATTITUDE
THE popularity of women’s societies for literary study, for economic discussion, for the consideration of municipal and social improvement, is enormous. They are to be found all over the country, but particularly do they flourish in the Middle West, where every town and hamlet in the region boasts a woman’s club of some sort. Both ridicule and praise are showered upon these organizations; and they deserve both. Some of their manifestations are crude, absurd and tiresome; others are fine in themselves, exert a broadening influence over those intimately concerned, and are helpful indirectly to the whole community represented by them. However much particular societies may lay themselves open to adverse criticism by reason of priggishness, superficiality or a mistaken sense of their importance in the scheme of things, it must be acknowledged that the general tendency of these organizations is good. They lift women out of the consideration of the commonplace, domestic side of existence; they encourage toleration and a give-and-take attitude toward life, in which attitude women are often lacking; they open a way for the development of latent talent of various kinds; they are often stepping stones to improvement in the social life of a community. It would be hard to estimate how much they have done in creating an atmosphere for the truly artistic and literary element in various communities throughout the United States. No doubt they have in this way encouraged the production of literature and other forms of art; while, in humbler fashion, they have brought pleasure and an outlook into many narrow circumscribed lives.
An English woman, visiting in a western city of our country, was asked what one of our institutions she admired the most. “The Woman’s Club,” she replied without hesitation, and added that she would like to transplant it to her native land where, it was true, there were associations of women banded together for various purposes, but none in which women met in such easy and happy intellectual relations as in the women’s clubs of America. Such praise from an unprejudiced observer of our country consoles the woman who believes in the mission of the woman’s club despite many an ugly newspaper fling. The English woman in question was fortunate in attending a club of particular interest and value where, to a degree, the ideal of what a woman’s club should be was realized. Such a club indicates the possibilities of the institution, however; and many organizations of women are working with crude material through absurd phases toward accomplishment as happy.