As We Go | Page 5

to transmit to posterity no family privilege. If our hearts swelled
with pride that we could create something just as good as royalty, that
the republic had as many men of distinguished appearance, as much

beauty, and as much brilliance of display as any traditional government,
we also felicitated ourselves that we could sweep it all away by a vote
and reproduce it with new actors next day.
It must be confessed that it was a people's affair. If at any time there
was any idea that it could be controlled only by those who represented
names honored for a hundred years, or conspicuous by any social
privilege, the idea was swamped in popular feeling. The names that had
been elected a hundred years ago did not stay elected unless the present
owners were able to distinguish themselves. There is nothing so to be
coveted in a country as the perpetuity of honorable names, and the
"centennial" showed that we are rich in those that have been honorably
borne, but it also showed that the century has gathered no privilege that
can count upon permanence.
But there is another aspect of the situation that is quite as serious and
satisfactory. Now that the ladies of the present are coming to dress as
ladies dressed a hundred years ago, we can make an adequate
comparison of beauty. Heaven forbid that we should disparage the
women of the Revolutionary period! They looked as well as they could
under all the circumstances of a new country and the hardships of an
early settlement. Some of them looked exceedingly well--there were
beauties in those days as there were giants in Old Testament times. The
portraits that have come down to us of some of them excite our
admiration, and indeed we have a sort of tradition of the loveliness of
the women of that remote period. The gallant men of the time exalted
them. Yet it must be admitted by any one who witnessed the public and
private gatherings of April, 1889, in New York, contributed to as they
were by women from every State, and who is unprejudiced by family
associations, that the women of America seem vastly improved in
personal appearance since the days when George Washington was a
lover: that is to say, the number of beautiful women is greater in
proportion to the population, and their beauty and charm are not
inferior to those which have been so much extolled in the
Revolutionary time. There is no doubt that if George Washington could
have been at the Metropolitan ball he would have acknowledged this,
and that while he might have had misgivings about some of our
political methods, he would have been more proud than ever to be still
acknowledged the Father of his Country.

THE NEWSPAPER-MADE MAN
A fair correspondent--has the phrase an old-time sound?--thinks we
should pay more attention to men. In a revolutionary time, when great
questions are in issue, minor matters, which may nevertheless be very
important, are apt to escape the consideration they deserve. We share
our correspondent's interest in men, but must plead the pressure of
circumstances. When there are so many Woman's Journals devoted to
the wants and aspirations of women alone, it is perhaps time to think of
having a Man's journal, which should try to keep his head above-water
in the struggle for social supremacy. When almost every number of the
leading periodicals has a paper about Woman--written probably by a
woman --Woman Today, Woman Yesterday, Woman Tomorrow; when
the inquiry is daily made in the press as to what is expected of woman,
and the new requirements laid upon her by reason of her opportunities,
her entrance into various occupations, her education--the impartial
observer is likely to be confused, if he is not swept away by the rising
tide of femininity in modern life.
But this very superiority of interest in the future of women is a warning
to man to look about him, and see where in this tide he is going to land,
if he will float or go ashore, and what will be his character and his
position in the new social order. It will not do for him to sit on the
stump of one of his prerogatives that woman has felled, and say with
Brahma, "They reckon ill who leave me out," for in the day of the
Subjection of Man it may be little consolation that he is left in.
It must be confessed that man has had a long inning. Perhaps it is true
that he owed this to his physical strength, and that he will only keep it
hereafter by intellectual superiority, by the dominance of mind. And
how in this generation is he equipping himself for the future? He is the
money-making animal.