As We Go | Page 6

That is beyond dispute. Never before were there
such business men as this generation can show--Napoleons of finance,
Alexanders of adventure, Shakespeares of speculation, Porsons of
accumulation. He is great in his field, but is he leaving the intellectual
province to woman? Does he read as much as she does? Is he becoming
anything but a newspaper-made person? Is his mind getting to be like
the newspaper? Speaking generally of the mass of business men--and
the mass are business men in this country--have they any habit of

reading books? They have clubs, to be sure, but of what sort? With the
exception of a conversation club here and there, and a literary club,
more or less perfunctory, are they not mostly social clubs for comfort
and idle lounging, many of them known, as other workmen are, by their
"chips"? What sort of a book would a member make out of "Chips from
my Workshop"? Do the young men, to any extent, join in Browning
clubs and Shakespeare clubs and Dante clubs? Do they meet for the
study of history, of authors, of literary periods, for reading, and
discussing what they read? Do they in concert dig in the encyclopaedias,
and write papers about the correlation of forces, and about Savonarola,
and about the Three Kings? In fact, what sort of a hand would the
Three Kings suggest to them? In the large cities the women's clubs,
pursuing literature, art, languages, botany, history, geography, geology,
mythology, are innumerable. And there is hardly a village in the land
that has not from one to six clubs of young girls who meet once a week
for some intellectual purpose. What are the young men of the villages
and the cities doing meantime? How are they preparing to meet socially
these young ladies who are cultivating their minds? Are they adapting
themselves to the new conditions? Or are they counting, as they always
have done, on the adaptability of women, on the facility with which the
members of the bright sex can interest themselves in base-ball and the
speed of horses and the chances of the "street"? Is it comfortable for the
young man, when the talk is about the last notable book, or the
philosophy of the popular poet or novelist, to feel that laughing eyes
are sounding his ignorance?
Man is a noble creation, and he has fine and sturdy qualities which
command the admiration of the other sex, but how will it be when that
sex, by reason of superior acquirements, is able to look down on him
intellectually? It used to be said that women are what men wish to have
them, that they endeavored to be the kind of women who would win
masculine admiration. How will it be if women have determined to
make themselves what it pleases them to be, and to cultivate their
powers in the expectation of pleasing men, if they indulge any such
expectation, by their higher qualities only? This is not a fanciful
possibility. It is one that young men will do well to ponder. It is easy to
ridicule the literary and economic and historical societies, and the naive
courage with which young women in them attack the gravest problems,

and to say that they are only a passing fashion, like decorative art and a
mode of dress. But a fashion is not to be underestimated; and when a
fashion continues and spreads like this one, it is significant of a great
change going on in society. And it is to be noticed that this fashion is
accompanied by other phenomena as interesting. There is scarcely an
occupation, once confined almost exclusively to men, in which women
are not now conspicuous. Never before were there so many women
who are superior musicians, performers themselves and organizers of
musical societies; never before so many women who can draw well;
never so many who are successful in literature, who write stories,
translate, compile, and are acceptable workers in magazines and in
publishing houses; and never before were so many women reading
good books, and thinking about them, and talking about them, and
trying to apply the lessons in them to the problems of their own lives,
which are seen not to end with marriage. A great deal of this activity,
crude much of it, is on the intellectual side, and must tell strongly
by-and-by in the position of women. And the young men will take
notice that it is the intellectual force that must dominate in life.

INTERESTING GIRLS
It seems hardly worth while to say that this would be a more interesting
country if there were more interesting people in it. But the remark is
worth consideration in a land where things are so much estimated by
what they cost. It is a very