Stern Moralist turns to husbands.
Does he? Why not?
Stern Moralist: "Back to the woodshed and chop the kindling for your wife to get supper with."
Onlookers: "Police! Arrest that man! He's crazy."
Stern Moralist, being propelled down corridor: "Well, if the way to restore women to womanliness is to make them do drudgery which they can hire somebody else to do, why isn't——"
His voice dies away.
Jim asks where Dora is. Loud chorus tells him. Details of Dora's divorce begin to fly about. Harry orders a round of drinks. Somebody praises the drawn butter sauce at the Suddington. This is met with the merits of the pineapple parfait at the La Fontaine. Jim thinks Dora's divorce was her husband's fault. Margaret gets up and goes back to the Purple Parlor and cries. Bessie begins to tell Jim how attentive Ned is to Margaret. This is so helpful that Jim gets up to find Margaret and tell her what he thinks of her. Finds her crying and thinks she is crying because Ned is away with Dora. Terrible row in Purple Parlor. Bessie starts in to explain. Everybody stands about in couples explaining. Waiter runs around trying to find gen'l'man to pay for undrunk drinks. Poor Frank, being the only member of the party who hasn't been drinking, is so sober that he pays. He finally corrals the whole crowd into a couple of taxi-cabs. They go down the street with everybody's head out of the cab-window and everybody's voice saying "The Suddington," "The Grunewurst," "Max's," "The Royal Gorge," "Perinique's."
The revulsion from empty leisure in the direction of full-every-night leisure is balanced to some extent by a revulsion toward activity of a useful sort. This latter revulsion has two phases: Economic Independence, which has been spoken of in former articles; Social Service and Citizenship, which will be spoken of next month.
Which one of these two revulsions will be the stronger? If it is the one toward useful activity, we shall see a dam erected against the current which, in carrying women out of the struggle for existence, carries them out of the world's mental strife. If it is the one toward frivolity, we shall see simply an acceleration of that current and a quicker and larger departure from all those habits of toil and service which produce power and character.
With marriage, of course, Marie had a certain opportunity to get back into life. She had before her at least fifteen years of real work. And it would have been work of the realest sort. Effort—to and beyond all other effort! The carrying of new life in fear, the delivery of it in torture, the nourishing of it in relinquishment f all the world's worldliness, the watching over it in sleeplessness, the healing of its sickness in heart-sickness, the bringing of it, with its body strong, its mind matured, up into the world of adults, up into the struggle for existence! What a work!