So pronounced was her skill that my
companion remarked it and said:
“Why is it that a girl can never
throw like a man?”
Just as he said this, a dignified
Jeffersonian
Conducted by Grace Kirkland
dame, powdered and bescented with
delicate perfume, fat from over
feeding, rustling in irreproachable
silk, who had lifted her lorgnette to
regard the little miss, remarked to
the woman walking with her, a tall,
lank anaemic, “How very undignified
and wrong!”
“Ah, there’s your answer,” I said
quickly to my friend. “A girl can
never throw like a boy because Stu
pidity, the worst form of inertia,
stands against her throwing at all;
and back of Stupidity and lending it
due reverence is that famous old Ty
rant Custom, the bulwark of all the
fools alive, the rote-book of every
unitiative ass that ever went about
in human skin!”
In “Don Juan” Byron says: “Man
to man so oft unjust is always so to
woman! ”
How remorsely and cruelly true
this is!
Who has not heard some little las
sie, imprisoned by her sex at some
time say, with all the earnestness of
her soul: “I wish I were a boy!”
Who has not heard a woman in de
spair at the thralldom of sex’ lim
itations wail: “I wish I were a
man!” In every mood, grave, gay,
or resentful, like the girl resting on
her plough ip the “Prophet of the
Great Smoky Mountains”—in every
mood and with every variety of im
pulse, we have heard them wail or
shriek or earnestly pray this.
I have never heard a man say he
wishes he were a woman!
From the cradle to the grave, un
der the most fool conventions, we
imprison the mothers of the human
race.
