Violets and Other Tales

								

attraction of mind to mind, the ability of one to compliment the lights
and shadows in the other, the capacity of either to fulfil the duties of
wife or husband--these do not enter into the contract. That is why we
have divorce courts.
And so our independent woman in every year of her full, rich,
well-rounded life, gaining fresh knowledge and experience, learning
humanity, and particularly that portion of it which is the other gender,
so well as to avoid clay-footed idols, and finally when she does consent
to bear the yoke upon her shoulders, does so with perhaps less romance
and glamor than her younger scoffing sisters, but with an assurance of
solid and more lasting happiness. Why should she have hastened this;
was aught lost by the delay?
"They say" that men don't admire this type of woman, that they prefer
the soft, dainty, winning, mindless creature who cuddles into men's
arms, agrees to everything they say, and looks upon them as a race of
gods turned loose upon this earth for the edification of womankind.
Well, may be so, but there is one thing positive, they certainly respect
the independent one, and admire her, too, even if it is at a distance,
and that in itself is something. As to the other part, no matter how
sensible a woman is on other questions, when she falls in love she is
fool enough to believe her adored one a veritable Solomon. Cuddling?
Well, she may preside over conventions, brandish her umbrella at board
meetings, tramp the streets soliciting subscriptions, wield the blue
pencil in an editorial sanctum, hammer a type-writer, smear her nose
with ink from a galley full of pied type, lead infant ideas through the
tortuous mazes of c-a-t and r-a-t, plead at the bar, or wield the
scalpel in a dissecting room, yet when the right moment comes, she will
sink as gracefully into his manly embrace, throw her arms as lovingly
around his neck, and cuddle as warmly and sweetly to his bosom as her
little sister who has done nothing else but think, dream, and practice
for that hour. It comes natural, you see.

TEN MINUTES' MUSING.

There was a terrible noise in the school-yard at intermission; peeping
out the windows the boys could be seen huddled in an immense bunch, in
the middle of the yard. It looked like a fight, a mob, a
knock-down,--anything, so we rushed out to the door hastily, fearfully,
ready to scold, punish, console, frown, bind up broken heads or drag
wounded forms from the melee as the case might be. Nearly every boy in
the school was in that seething, swarming mass, and those who weren't
were standing around on the edges, screaming and throwing up their hats
in hilarious excitement. It was a mob, a fearful mob, but a mob
apparently with a vigorous and well-defined purpose. It was a mob that
screamed and howled, and kicked, and yelled, and shouted, and perspired,
and squirmed, and wriggled, and pushed, and threatened, and poured
itself all seemingly upon some central object. It was a mob that had an