A coarse-tongued man is bad enough,
heaven knows, but when a woman descends to slangy speech, and vulgar
jests, and harsh diatribes, there is no language strong enough with
which to denounce her. On the principle that a strawberry is quicker
to spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less to render a woman obnoxious than
to make a man unfit for decent company. I am no lover of
butter-mouthed girls, of prudes and "prunes and prism" fine ladies; I
love sprightliness and gay spirits and unconventionality, but the
moment a woman steps over the border land that separates delicacy of
feeling, womanliness and lovableness, from rudeness, loud-voiced slang
and the unblushing desire for notoriety, she becomes, in the eyes of
all whose opinion is worth having, a miserable caricature upon her sex.
It is not quite so bad to see a young girl making a fool of herself as
to see an elderly woman comporting herself in a giddy manner in public
places. We look for feather-heads among juveniles, but surely the
cares and troubles of fifty years should tame down the high spirits of
any woman. Chance took me into a public office the other day, largely
conducted by women. Conspicuous among the clerks was a woman whose age
must have exceeded fifty years. She was exchanging loud pleasantries
with a couple of beardless boys upon the question of "getting tight."
Noble theme for a woman old enough to be their grandmother to choose!
As I listened to the coarse jests and looked into her hard and unlovely
face, I could but wonder how nature ever made the mistake to label such
material--"woman.
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