第52章

"Got a character?" asked the farmer.The boy replied that he had for the last two years been working for Mr.Muggs, the ironmonger--felt sure that Mr.Muggs would give him a good character.

"Well, go and ask Mr.Muggs to come across and speak to me, I will wait here," directed the would-be employer.Five minutes went by--ten minutes.No Mr.Muggs appeared.Later in the afternoon the farmer met the boy again.

"Mr.Muggs never came near me with that character of yours," said the farmer.

"No, sir," answered the boy, "I didn't ask him to.""Why not?" inquired the farmer.

"Well, I told him who it was that wanted it"--the boy hesitated.

"Well?" demanded the farmer, impatiently.

"Well, then, he told me yours," explained the boy.

Maybe the working woman, looking for a husband, and not merely a livelihood, may end by formulating standards of her own.She may end by demanding the manly man and moving about the world, knowing something of life, may arrive at the conclusion that something more is needed than the smoking of pipes and the drinking of whiskies and sodas.We must be prepared for this.The sheltered woman who learnt her life from fairy stories is a dream of the past.Woman has escaped from her "shelter"--she is on the loose.For the future we men have got to accept the emancipated woman as an accomplished fact.

[The ideal World.]

Many of us are worried about her.What is going to become of the home? I admit there is a more ideal existence where the working woman would find no place; it is in a world that exists only on the comic opera stage.There every picturesque village contains an equal number of ladies and gentlemen nearly all the same height and weight, to all appearance of the same age.Each Jack has his Jill, and does not want anybody else's.There are no complications: one presumes they draw lots and fall in love the moment they unscrew the paper.

They dance for awhile on grass which is never damp, and then into the conveniently situated ivy-covered church they troop in pairs and are wedded off hand by a white-haired clergyman, who is a married man himself.

Ah, if the world were but a comic opera stage, there would be no need for working women! As a matter of fact, so far as one can judge from the front of the house, there are no working men either.

But outside the opera house in the muddy street Jack goes home to his third floor back, or his chambers in the Albany, according to his caste, and wonders when the time will come when he will be able to support a wife.And Jill climbs on a penny 'bus, or steps into the family brougham, and dreams with regret of a lost garden, where there was just one man and just one woman, and clothes grew on a fig tree.

With the progress of civilization--utterly opposed as it is to all Nature's intentions--the number of working women will increase.With some friends the other day I was discussing motor-cars, and one gentleman with sorrow in his voice--he is the type of Conservative who would have regretted the passing away of the glacial period--opined that motor-cars had come to stay.

"You mean," said another, "they have come to go." The working woman, however much we may regret it, has come to go, and she is going it.