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the neighbors.
So the woman gets the lion's share of "sympathy" - which means that all
the other women get out their best handkerchiefs and try to imagine
just how they would "feel" if in her place. Of course
there are exceptions. I have heard of men who wept and retailed their
woes; and I have heard of women with gumption. The woman who
wrote the letter at the head of this chapter is a feel-er, not a thinker.
She looks at the forlorn, bedraggled specimens of her own sex and
"feels" with them, never THINKING that the women themselves have anything
to do with making their conditions. She "feels" with the woman because
she is a woman. Being an unthinking creature she cannot "feel"
for the man at all. Man is the
stronger for no other reason than that he uses his wits and his will to
control his feelings. "B. B." has seen children gazing into shop
windows. Immediately she imagines how she would "feel" if in their places.
She does not stop to THINK that in all probability the simple act of
gazing into the window may bring more real joy to those children than
the possession of the whole windowful of toys would bring to some
rich man's child. She does not think that life consists not in
possessions or environment, but in the ability to use possessions or
environment. If she were an Edwin Abbey or a Michael Angelo she
would gaze on our chromo-bedecked walls and work herself up into a great
state of "feeling" because we had to have such miserable daubs instead
of real works of art. If she saw us gazing on an Abbey or Angelo picture
she would weep tears to think we couldn't have such pictures
instead of those hideous bright chromos on our walls. It would never occur to
her that we might be privately comparing her Abbeys and Angelos with
our chromos, and wondering how anybody could possibly see beauty in the
Abbeys and Angelos. About
nine-tenths of women's so-called "sympathy" is just about as foolish and
misplaced as that. If "B. B." would go up and get acquainted with some of
those small youngsters she sees gazing into the shop windows she
would find some of her illusions dispelled. She would find among them
less "longing" than she thinks, and more wonder and criticism and pure
curiosity - such as she would find in her own heart if she were gazing at a
curio collection. I remember a
large family of very small boys that I used to "feel" for, very deeply.
Poor little pinched, ragged looking fellows they were, and always working
before and after school hours. I gave them nickels and dimes and my
children's outgrown clothes, and new fleece lined gloves for their blue
little hands. They kept the clothes hung up at home and the gloves
stuffed in their pants pockets. And one day I discovered that every one of
those small youngsters had a bank account - something I had never had
in my life! They lived as they liked to live, and I had
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