Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/199

nothing but independence and individuality. Let her eschew his fashions in dress, his talk and his manners. A woman who wears "mannish" clothes, smokes cigars, rattles out slang, gambles at cards, and drinks brandy and soda on the slightest provocation, is lost altogether, both as woman and man, and becomes sexless But the woman whose dress is always becoming and graceful, whose voice is equable and tender, who enhances whatever beauty she possesses by exquisite manner, unblemished reputation, and intellectual capacity combined, raises herself not only to an equality with man, but goes so far above him that she straightway becomes the Goddess and he the Worshipper. This is as it should be. Men adore what they cannot imitate. Therefore when men are drunken, let women be sober; when men are licentious, let women be chaste; when men are turf-hunters and card-players, let women absent themselves from both the race-course and the gambling-table; and while placing a gentle yet firm ban on laxity in morals and disregard of the binding sanctity of family life, let them silently work on and make progress in every art, every profession, every useful handicraft, that they may not be dependent for home or livel hood on man's merely casual fancy or idle whim. The mistake of Woman's progress up to the present, has been her slavish imitation of Man's often unadmirable tastes, and a pathetic "going down" under his lofty disdain. Once grasp the fact that his disdain is not "lofty" but merely comic, and that his case is only that of the Distressful Peacock, hurt by indifference to his tail, things will right themselves. Nature has