MRS. Jones—do you know her? She looks well to the ways of her household. She knows how every ounce of butter, and every spoonful of tea and coffee are disposed of. She is posted as to the sugar, and milk and potatoes, and calculates to a moment how long-lived must be a joint of meat, or what is the weight of a loaf of bread. She understands what should be the perpetuity of kindling wood, and knows when it is diverted from its original purpose as an auxiliary, by a dilatory cook, and used as a principal, to hurry up a late breakfast. You can't cheat Mrs. Jones. Every pot, pan, basin, knife, fork, spoon, in her establishment, serves its legitimate purpose, and no other; and never loses its edge or polish, or disappears "unbeknownst" into the ash-barrel. She scorns to buy preserves or pickles, how well soever made, and though she may encounter no pecuniary loss in doing so; she thinks it an excellent use of her time, although they are "well off," to prepare them with her own deft hands. She is at home when her husband leaves, and she is at home when her husband comes back. She does much of the sewing and fitting of family garments, and all the mending; and she often calls upon the minister to baptize a new baby. She is cheerful and content in her snuggery of a house, and every saucepan in it is surrounded with a halo. "Woman's Rights" simply sets her giggling, when mentioned. Her own family tub sets firm on its bottom—isn't that enough? Year after year passes. The freshness has left her face, and the features have sharpened, as she whirls round and round in this little maelstrom, with no desire to catch breath for one single moment. Occasionally she goes outside of her own door, but feels better inside, and hurries home as if she had committed a crime, in letting up her martinet superintendence for one moment.
As to books and newspapers, she never looks at either. "She says she has no time." I don't know whether she ever thinks that her children will some day grow up, and may ask questions which it were a pity their mother should be too ignorant to answer. I don't know whether she ever thinks her husband may weary at evening, of the history of the family potato. Since it is cooked invariably to his liking, it may be that is all he requires. But after he has eaten his dinner, and is satisfied—such is man—that I wouldn't like to dismiss Mrs. Jones to the nursery and put a bright woman in her place, unless "ma" lived round the corner.
Now Mrs. Smith lives opposite Mrs. Jones. The devil might fly away with her saucepans, and she wouldn't care. Why does she hire servants, if she herself is to superintend saucepans? Is Mr. Smith always home to dinner, that she need be? Has a woman no rights? Is it for her to be absorbed by the miserable family potato, when many women have no potato at all? Her answer is on the public platform. Smith indeed turns pale to think of it; but who or what is Smith? He's only a man,—a tyrannical, overbearing man, possibly of the worst type, who believes in "whipping females." Her "mission" is to reform such men—peaceably, if she can; belligerently, if she must; but it has got to "come off" somehow. Meantime the nurse rubs her children's noses up instead of down; fills their eyes with soap-suds, and then boxes their ears for "whining about it;" eats their lunch and tosses them hers. She tells the youngest child of the "black man who swallows little children whole" when she wants it to be still in bed, so that she may converse with her "cousin" in the area; and then wonders "what can ail the little dear," when its progressive mother returns from her public speech-making, to find it in a stiff fit. As to Mr. Smith, he hates women's rights—he wants something to eat.
Now here are two female extremists. I don't see the necessity of either; but after saying this, I frankly declare that, had I to choose, Mrs. Jones has my preference. Her children have a home at least. They have good wholesome food, and clothes suitable to the weather. If they are sick, they have watchful care. And no mother, unless she first secure all this to their helplessness, has any right, in my opinion, on the public platform. This much Mrs. Jones hath done. Possibly Jones, her husband, takes it, like sunshine, as a matter of course, and needing no special thanks. Men are more stupid, and ignorant, than ugly, on this and kindred points. They don't dream, unless in very exceptionable cases, how a wife longs sometimes to have a husband testify his pleasure at her invariable good cheer in some other way than by gobbling it up, till he is as torpid as an anaconda, until next feeding time. He never feels the need of such recognition; and so, if his attention is called to it by a half-smothered, weary sigh from some little wife who can't do without it, why, he thinks it "babyish." Such a man ought to marry a man—that's my verdict. Where's the sense of plucking a flower to put your foot on it? Better take a stone post for better, or worse, and have done with it. You can't dam—n up a woman's feelings as you would a village stream. You can't choose her for her tender, womanly ways, and then expect when you get her home that she will "heads up" with an unwinking stare at you for further orders the rest of her life. If that's the wife you wanted, why not take one of those figures outside the store-doors in Broadway, with a dress pinned on, which, when twirled round, stand stock still till they get another twirl? They are headless, to be sure, but they are so docile!
